Everything about Crimean War totally explained
The
Crimean War (1853–1856) was fought between
Imperial Russia on one side and an alliance of
France, the
United Kingdom, the
Kingdom of Sardinia, and the
Ottoman Empire on the other. Most of the conflict took place on the
Crimean Peninsula, with additional actions occurring in western
Turkey, and the
Baltic Sea region.
The Crimean War is sometimes considered to be the first "modern" conflict and "introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare."
Build-up to war
Conflict over the Holy Land
The chain of events leading to Britain and France declaring war on Russia on
28 March 1854 can be traced to the 1851
coup d'état in France.
Napoleon III had his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire force the Ottomans to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the
Holy Land.
Quickly, the Russians made counterclaims to this newest change in "authority" in the Holy Land. Pointing to two more treaties, one in 1757 and the other in 1774, the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renouncing the French treaty and insisting that Russia was the protector of the
Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon III responded with a show of force, sending the
ship of the line Charlemagne to the
Black Sea, a violation of the
London Straits Convention.
Tsar
Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River
Danube, and had
Count Karl Nesselrode, his foreign minister, undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to the British ambassador in
St Petersburg, Sir
Hamilton Seymour:
[Thedispute over the holy places] had assumed a new character - that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence - violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance.
As conflict loomed over the question of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive which they hoped would prevent either Britain or France from interfering in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans, as well as to prevent them from allying together.
Nicholas began courting Britain through Seymour. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand Imperial Russia further, but that he'd an obligation to Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.
The Tsar next dispatched a diplomat,
Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the
Porte. By previous treaties, the Sultan was committed "to protect the Christian religion and its churches", but Menshikov attempted to negotiate a new treaty, under which Russia would be allowed to interfere whenever it deemed the Sultan's protection inadequate. Further, this new
synod, a religious convention, would allow Russia to control the Orthodox Church's hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire. Menshikov arrived at Constantinople on
16 February on the steam-powered warship
Gromovnik. Menshikov broke protocol at the Porte when, at his first meeting with the Sultan, he condemned the Ottoman's concessions to the French. Menshikov also began demanding the replacement of highly-placed Ottoman civil servants.
The British embassy at Constantinople at the time was being run by
Hugh Rose,
chargé d'affaires for the British. Using his considerable resources within the Ottoman Empire, Rose gathered intelligence on Russian troop movements along the Danube frontier, and became concerned about the extent of Menshikov's mission to the Porte. Rose, using his authority as the British representative to the Ottomans, ordered a British squadron of warships to depart early for an eastern
Mediterranean cruise and head for Constantinople. However, Rose's actions were not backed up by the British admiral in command of the squadron,
Whitley Dundas, who resented the diplomat for believing he could interfere in the
Admiralty's business. Within a week, Rose's actions were cancelled. Only the French sent a naval task force to support the Ottomans.
First hostilities
At the same time, however, the British government of Prime Minister
Aberdeen sent
Lord Stratford. Through skilful diplomacy, Lord Stratford convinced the Sultan to reject the treaty, which compromised the independence of the Turks.
Benjamin Disraeli blamed Aberdeen and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, thus starting the process by which Aberdeen would be forced to resign for his role in starting the war. Shortly after he learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy, the Tsar marched his armies into
Moldavia and
Wallachia (Ottoman principalities along the
Danube in which Russia was acknowledged as a special guardian of the Orthodox Church), using the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the Holy Places as a pretext. Nicholas believed that the European powers, especially
Austria, wouldn't object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially given Russian involvement in suppressing the
Revolutions of 1848.
When the Tsar sent his troops into the "
Danubian Principalities", Great Britain, seeking to maintain the security of the Ottoman Empire, sent a fleet to the
Dardanelles, where it joined another fleet sent by France. At the same time, however, the European powers hoped for a diplomatic compromise. The representatives of the four neutral Great Powers — Great Britain, France, Austria and
Prussia — met in
Vienna, where they drafted a note which they hoped would be acceptable to the Russians and Ottomans. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I; it was, however, rejected by Abdülmecid, who felt that the document's poor phrasing left it open to many different interpretations. Great Britain, France and Austria were united in proposing amendments to mollify the Sultan, but their suggestions were ignored in the court of St Petersburg.
Great Britain and France set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia didn't believe that the rejection of the proposed amendments justified the abandonment of the diplomatic process. The Sultan proceeded to war, his armies attacking the Russian army near the Danube. Nicholas responded by dispatching warships, which
destroyed a patrol squadron of Ottoman frigates and corvettes while they were anchored at the port of
Sinop in northern Turkey on
November 30 1853. The destruction of the Turkish ships provided Great Britain and France the
casus belli for declaring war against Russia, on the side of the Ottoman Empire. Late in March of 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, Great Britain and France formally declared war.
Peace attempts
Nicholas felt that because of his services rendered in 1848, Austrians would side with him, or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops. When Great Britain and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the principalities, Austria supported them; and, though it didn't immediately declare war on Russia, it refused to guarantee its neutrality.
Though the original grounds for war were lost when Russia withdrew its troops, Great Britain and France continued with hostilities. Determined to address the
Eastern Question by putting an end to the Russian threat to the Ottoman Empire, the allies proposed several conditions for a peaceful resolution, including:
- Russia was to give up its protectorate over the Danubian Principalities;
- It was to abandon any claim granting it the right to interfere in Ottoman affairs on the behalf of the Orthodox Christians;
- The Straits Convention of 1841 was to be revised;
- All nations were to be granted access to the River Danube.
When the Tsar refused to comply with these Four Points, the Crimean War commenced.
Crimean War
Siege of Sevastopol
During the following month, though the immediate cause of war was withdrawn, allied troops landed in the Crimea and besieged the city of
Sevastopol, home of the Tsar's
Black Sea Fleet and the associated threat of potential Russian penetration into the Mediterranean.
The Russians had to
scuttle their ships, and used the naval cannons as additional artillery and the ships' crews as marines. During the siege, the Russians lost four 110- or 120-gun 3-decker
ships of the line, twelve 84-gun 2-deckers and four 60-gun
frigates in the Black Sea, plus a large number of smaller vessels.
Admiral Nakhimov suffered a fatal bullet wound to the head and died on
30 June 1855. The city was captured in September 9, 1855, after about a year-long siege.
In the same year, the Russians
besieged and occupied the Turkish fortress of
Kars (the
Battle of Kurekdere had been fought between the two in the same general area the year before).
Baltic theatre
The
Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the war. The popularisation of events elsewhere has overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to the
Russian capital. From the beginning, the Baltic campaign turned into a stalemate. The outnumbered
Russian Baltic Fleet confined its movements to the areas around fortifications. At the same time, British and French commanders
Sir Charles Napier and Parseval-Deschènes – although they led the largest fleet assembled since the
Napoleonic Wars – considered Russian coastal fortifications, especially the
Kronstadt fortress, too well-defended to engage and limited their actions to blockading Russian trade and conducting raids on less fortified sections of the
Finnish coast.
Russia was dependent on imports for both the domestic economy and the supply of her military forces and the blockade seriously undermined the Russian economy. Raiding by allied British and French fleets destroyed forts on the Finnish coast including
Bomarsund on the
Åland Islands and
Fort Slava. Other such attacks were not so successful, and the poorly planned attempts to take
Hanko,
Ekenäs,
Kokkola and
Turku were repulsed.
The burning of
tar warehouses and ships in
Oulu and
Raahe led to international criticism, and in Britain, MP
Thomas Gibson demanded in the
House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain
a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers. In the autumn, a squadron of three British warships led by
HMS Miranda left the Baltic for the
White Sea, where they shelled
Kola (which was utterly destroyed) and the
Solovki. Their attempt to storm
Arkhangelsk proved abortive, as was the
siege of Petropavlovsk in
Kamchatka. Here, an Anglo-French naval squadron successfully shelled the town but a naval brigade of 800 sailors and marines landed the next day was repulsed.
In 1855, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at
Sveaborg outside
Helsinki. More than 1,000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship
Rossiya, led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbour. The Allies fired over twenty thousand shells but were unable to defeat the Russian batteries. A massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels was prepared, but before the attack was launched, the war ended.
Part of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly created blockade mines. Perhaps the most influential contributor to the development of naval mining was inventor and civil engineer Immanuel Nobel, the father of Alfred Nobel, who is widely recognized for being the inventor of dynamite and a founder of the Nobel Prize. Immanuel helped the war effort for Russia by applying his skilful knowledge of industrial explosives such as nitroglycerin and gunpowder. Modern
naval mining is said to date from the Crimean War: "
Torpedo mines, if I may use this name given by Fulton to self-acting mines underwater, were among the novelties attempted by the Russians in their defenses about Cronstadt and Sevastopol", as one American officer put it in 1860.
Genitchi Strait
The Russians had built a large floating pontoon bridge across the Genitchi Strait,
Sea of Azov, to connect the town of Genitchi to the
Arabat Spit, and it served as the main supply route to reinforce their troops at Sevastopol. The destruction of the bridge would force the Russians to travel an extra 192 km (120 miles) to deliver supplies, and it therefore became a strategic objective for British forces. Two attacks to cut the floating bridge's hawsers had proved unsuccessful and alerted the Russian garrison. The British made a third attempt on 3 July 1855 using
HMS Beagle's four-oared gig, commanded by Gunner John Hayles, and a small paddle-box steamer with one gun, under Midshipman Martin Tracy. The paddle-box steamer moored where the crew could see Russian soldiers marching about on shore and fired the first round in the breech, which drew the gun's securing bolts and made it useless. That left six men in a four-oared boat (including
Joseph Trewavas), one rifle, ten rounds of ammunition, and a cutlass apiece to face two hundred enemy on shore behind heaps of coal.
In Trewavas's own words, "As we paddled out of sight of our ship, on a little mound we could see the Russians motioning the soldiers on shore to keep down and our man in the bow with a loaded rifle wanted to have a 'go' at them but the gunner gave him orders not to do so. I was pulling the bow oar and when we were near the floating bridge, I leapt onto it, cut the hawsers and jumped back in the boat again and shoved off. During this time the Russians, who were only 80 meters off, hadn't fired a shot, and our man in the bow fired his rifle at them swearing he hit his man. The Russians then let fly. For some time we couldn't get away as the water was so shallow, and the shot came at us like hailstones, wounding three men and riddling the boat with shot. Reaching safety and the protection of our ship, our boat was sinking and full of water."
(Trewavas wondered why the Russians hadn't fired upon the British as they approached the pontoon bridge at Genitchi, but later a Russian officer explained that they'd no idea the sailors planned to destroy the bridge, believing rather that they intended to destroy shipping, and therefore held fire with the intention of taking them prisoner.)
Pacific
Minor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where a strong British and French Allied squadron (including
HMS Pique) under Rear Admiral David Price and Contre-admiral Febrier-Despointes
besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral
Yevfimy Putyatin at
Petropavlovsk on the
Kamchatka Peninsula. An Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties in September 1854, and the Allies withdrew. The Russians escaped under snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.
Italian involvement
With the
Italian Unification campaign going on at the time in the Italian states,
Camillo di Cavour, under orders by
Victor Emmanuel II of the
Kingdom of Sardinia, sent troops to side with French and British forces during the war. This was an attempt at gaining the favour of the French especially when the issue of uniting Italy under the Sardinian throne would become an important matter. The deployment of Italian troops to the Crimea allowed Piedmont to be represented at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the
risorgimento to other European powers.
End of the war
Peace negotiations began in 1856 under Nicholas I's son and successor,
Alexander II, through the
Congress of Paris. Furthermore, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea clauses came at a tremendous disadvantage to Russia, for it greatly diminished the naval threat it posed to the Turks. Moreover, all the Great Powers pledged to respect the independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
The
Treaty of Paris stood until 1871, when France was crushed by the German states in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Whilst Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful
German Empire, the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, was deposed to permit the formation of a
French Republic. During his reign (which began in 1852), Napoleon III, eager for the support of Great Britain, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire, however, didn't in any significant manner threaten the interests of France. Thus, France abandoned its opposition to Russia after the establishment of a Republic. Encouraged by the decision of the French, and supported by the German minister
Otto Fürst von Bismarck, Russia denounced the Black Sea clauses of the treaty agreed to in 1856. As Great Britain alone couldn't enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.
Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria was diplomatically isolated following the war. This led to its defeat in the 1866
Austro-Prussian War and loss of influence in most German-speaking lands. Soon after, Austria would ally with Prussia as it became the new state of Germany, creating the conditions that would lead to
World War I.
Criticisms and reform
The Crimean War was infamously known for military and logistical incompetence. However, it highlighted the work of women who served as army nurses. War correspondents for newspapers reported the scandalous treatment of wounded soldiers in the desperate winter that followed and prompted the work of
Florence Nightingale,
Mary Seacole, and others and led to the introduction of modern nursing methods.
The Crimean War also saw the first tactical use of
railways and other modern inventions such as the
telegraph. The Crimean War employed modern military tactics, such as trenches and blind artillery fire. The use of the
Minié ball for shot, coupled with the rifling of barrels, greatly increased Allied rifle range and damage.
The
British Army system of
sale of commissions came under great scrutiny during the war, especially in connection with the
Battle of Balaclava, which saw the ill-fated
Charge of the Light Brigade. This scrutiny eventually lead to the abolition of the sale of commissions.
It has been noted by many sources that the Crimean War resulted in the Russian abolition of the serfdom in 1861. It is believed that
Alexander II saw the military defeat of the Russian serf army by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation.
Major events of the war
Some action also took place on the Russian Pacific coast, Asia Minor, the Baltic and White Seas
The roots of the war lay in the existing rivalry between the British and the Russians in other areas such as Afghanistan (The Great Game). Conflicts over control of holy places in Jerusalem led to aggressive actions in the Balkans, and around the Dardanelles.
Major battles
It was the first war where the electric telegraph started to have a significant effect, with the first 'live' war reporting to The Times by William Howard Russell. Indeed, some credit Russell with prompting the resignation of the sitting British government through his reporting of the lacklustre shape of the British forces deployed to the Crimea. Additionally, the telegraph reduced the independence of British overseas possessions from their commanders in London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.
Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole came to prominence for their contributions in the field of nursing.
Prominent military commanders
Russian commanders
British commanders
French commanders
Ottoman commanders
Sardo-Piedmontese commanders
Crimean War in fiction
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson depicted a disastrous but brave cavalry charge during the Battle of Balaclava.
Leo Tolstoy wrote a few short sketches on the Siege of Sevastopol, collected in The Sebastopol Sketches. The stories detail the lives of the Russian soldiers and citizens in Sevastopol during the siege. Because of this work, Tolstoy has been called the world's first war correspondent.
In the Thursday Next series of novels by Jasper Fforde, which are set in an alternative reality, the Crimean War lasts 132 years from 1853 to 1985, and creates sour relations between Imperial Russia and England. The protagonist of the series, Thursday Next, fought in the conflict.
Beryl Bainbridge's novel Master Georgie is set in the Crimean War.
Garry Douglas Kilworth's series of Fancy Jack Crossman novels, 5 in all, also deal with the Crimean War. Battle of the Alma, The Valley of Death, Soldiers in the Mist, The Winter Soldiers, Battle for the Redan.
George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman at the Charge (1986) is also set in the Crimean War. Fraser uses his anti-hero Harry Flashman to provide a first-person perspective of the events leading up to the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade, as well as the Charge itself.
Stephen Baxter's novel Anti-Ice starts with the siege of Sevastopol, which is shortened dramatically by a new Anti-Ice weapon. The book asks the question - what if nuclear weapons had existed in Victorian times?
Jack Archer: A Tale of the Crimea by G.A. Henty, 1883, a historical novel, details the adventures of two sailors in the Crimean War.
"Luck", by Mark Twain, mentions the Crimean War in connection with a celebrated war hero.
The Great Stink by Clare Clark, debut novel published 2006, tells the story of a traumatised veteran of the Crimean War and contains a number of references and flashbacks to this conflict.
The Brazilian novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis used the Crimean War as the subject of a polemic between the protagonist Bento and his sickly neighbor in his masterpiece Dom Casmurro. The neighbour concludes every letter he writes in support of the Anglo-French alliance with the statement, "The Russians will never enter Constantinople!" prompting Bento to reflect, years after the neighbour's death, on the sense of permanency created by his use of the word "never", wondering when the statement would become invalid or if the Russians would ever enter Constantinople, though the war ended long ago.
Crime Fiction author Anne Perry's William Monk novels include commentaries on the Crimean War through the eyes of the character Hester Latterly, 'one of Miss Nightingale's nurses'.
"Hope" by Lesley Pearse describes the experiences of a nurse in the Crimean War as part of a wider and longer plot.
The Michael Crichton novel The Great Train Robbery revolves around the theft of a gold shipment that was to pay the troops in the Crimea.
The Crimean War is mentioned as the time in which the background events to the Sherlock Holmes Adventure of the "Gloria Scott" took place.
In chapter 34 of Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty an old war horse called Captain tells Black Beauty of his experiences in the cavalry during the Crimean war.
In William Golding's novel The Pyramid the advances in turnip production during the Crimean war are referenced throughout, with the novel possibly being a metaphor for farm life.
The novel The Rose of Sebastapol by Katherine McMahon is set in Victorian England during the Crimean War, with the latter part of the book being set in the Crimea itself.
The song "Abdul Abulbul Amir" by Irish music hall performer Percy French was inspired by the Crimean War and reduces it to two fighters, the Turk Abdul and the Russian soldier Ivan Skavinsky Skivar, who duel over a triviality and both die, accomplishing nothing.
The Irish music song "The Kerry Recruit" deals with the experiences of a young man from Kerry who fights in the war.
The music video for Kasabian song "Empire" is set during the Crimean War - with the band members as British infantrymen. It was shot on location outside of Bucharest, Romania.
The song "The Trooper" by English metal band Iron Maiden is about the Crimean War.Further Information
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