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Big questions of the Crimean War: aftermath and legacy
Professor Andrew Lambert considers the legacy of the Crimean War, as well as some of the key innovations and technological advancements that came out of it
From advances in weaponry and warships to the use of telegraphs and photography, the Crimean War produced a whole host of innovations. In the final episode of our three-part series exploring the conflict, Professor Andrew Lambert takes Rachel Dinning through some of the key innovations that came out of the Crimean War. Plus, they consider some of the main misconceptions about the conflict, as well as the parallels with the Russia-Ukraine war today.
Big questions of the Crimean War: into the Valley of Death
Professor Andrew Lambert traces the key battles and encounters that shaped the Crimean War
You may be familiar with Alfred Lord Tennyson poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, which famously – though not entirely accurately – describes the events of the 1854 battle of Balaclava, a key clash in the Crimean War. But how much do you know about the first confrontation along the Danube or the fierce fight to take Sevastopol? In this second episode of this new series charting the key moments in the Crimean War, Professor Andrew Lambert talks to Rachel Dinning about the key battles and encounters that shaped the conflict, as well as the military strategy that informed its outcome.
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Religious tensions and Russian ambitions shattered the system that had long prevented war between Europe’s major powers
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 where Jesus Christ was crucified, found itself at the centre of a 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. Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War For years, tensions had been escalating at churches across the holy land. It was at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, however, that the rivalry turned physical, with the two groups coming to blows with fists, knives, candlesticks and crucifixes. Such was the level of violence that, in 1852, Lord Malmesbury, British foreign secretary, commented on “the melancholy spectacle” of “rival churches contending for mastery in the very place where Christ died for mankind”. Melancholy it might have been but the dispute was hugely consequential – for both sets of monks had powerful backers. The Orthodox clerics were supported by the Russian empire; their Catholic foes championed by France, which had recently allied itself with Britain. For more than a decade these European superpowers had engaged in an increasingly dangerous dance of diplomatic brinkmanship. The monks’ battle in Jerusalem set them on a seemingly irreversible course for war. To understand why, we need to leave Palestine and travel back to the city of Vienna in 1815. For it was here, in the Austrian capital, that a treaty was signed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars that would set the template for Europe’s balance of power across the 19th century. Napoleonic roots There were numerous beneficiaries of the Treaty of Vienna, but it can be argued that no nation gained more than Britain. The negotiations that preceded the treaty saw the British attempting to engineer a network of alliances that prevented a single strongman ever dominating Europe again (as Napoleon Bonaparte had once done), so they could avoid another costly war and get on with the business of running their global empire. For the most part, Britain got its way. This outcome no doubt delighted politicians in London. Less happy was the leader of another nation that had emerged victorious from the Napoleonic Wars: Russian tsar Alexander I. Nationalist and expansionist, Alexander had designs on being the European strongman that Britain most feared. He and his even more militaristic successor, Nicholas I, railed against British power and the liberal, democratic ideals that they saw emanating from the west. The scene was now set for an intense geopolitical rivalry. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/GettyImages1053531364-9728f3e-e1677151837818.jpg" width="590" height="412" alt="The Treaty of Vienna, signed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, had aimed to prevent another ‘strongman’ from attempting to conquer Europe" title="The Treaty of Vienna, signed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, had aimed to prevent another ‘strongman’ from attempting to conquer Europe" /> In the middle of these two nations sat the Ottoman empire, a centuries-old imperium whose ailing condition had earned it the nickname “the sick man of Europe”. That sick man status had already seen it fall foul of Russia’s expansionist ambitions. As early as the 1780s the Russians had seized the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in order to gain its fleet a priceless warm water harbour. When, in the 1820s, Russian forces advanced into Ottoman Bulgaria, the Caucasus, and northeastern Anatolia, British fears of Russia’s million-strong army surging towards India, the jewel in its imperial crown, rose sharply. Read more | The major innovations of the Crimean War As the middle of the century approached, the flames of Anglo-Russian tensions were fanned further by the re-emergence of France as a military power. The French were also fearful of growing Russian ambitions and added another combustible element to the mix: religion. Paris threw its weight behind the claims of Catholic monks to be the true authority over Palestine’s holy sites – in direct opposition to Russian-backed Orthodox clerics. The result was the battle of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. These religious tensions were the spark that ignited a diplomatic tinderbox. The Ottomans, in whose territory Palestine was sited, found themselves the rope in an increasingly vigorous tug of war between the Russians and their Anglo-French rivals. When the Ottomans acknowledged Russian authority over Palestine’s Christians, Paris sent a battleship, the Charlemagne, to Istanbul to encourage them to change their mind. When this French brand of gunboat diplomacy worked, the Russians sent their own military mission to the Danubian Principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish border. Ottoman outrage With talks failing and Tsar Nicholas I left fuming at “the infernal dictatorship” of Stratford Canning, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman empire, conflict moved ever closer. And so it proved in October 1853, when the Turks, enraged at Russian incursions, declared war on Moscow. Read more | 8 battles that shaped the Crimean War For now Britain and France stayed out of the conflict. Yet all that changed in the wake of the battle of Sinop on 30 November 1853, which saw Russian battleships pounding Ottoman ships in the Black Sea, killing nearly 3,000 Turks. Within two months, French and British fleets had themselves sailed to the Black Sea. On 28 March 1854, with public opinion still inflamed by the bloodbath at Sinop, they entered what would soon be known as the Crimean War. This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
What was the impact of the Crimean War? Professor Andrew Lambert explains...
For many years, the Crimean War was remembered as a distant and chaotic conflict of no great importance. But when, in 2014, Vladimir Putin seized the Crimea and then followed that in 2022 with his invasion of Ukraine, he reminded the world that Russian empires have pushed south and west for the past 500 years, subjugating other peoples to enhance their own security. It had been the unprovoked seizure of two Turkish provinces in 1853 that started the first great power conflict in Europe since 1815. British ministers had long anticipated the attack, and supported the victim, so along with France they gave Russia one last chance to avoid war. This was ignored, so the Anglo-French declaration of war came in late March 1854. In the end, Russia was defeated in a war that stretched across four theatres – the Pacific, the Black and White Seas, and the Baltic – with the allies relying on British maritime strategy, combining economic warfare with coastal attacks. The Crimean campaign was intended to destroy Russia’s Black Sea fleet and naval base at Sevastopol, thus preventing them from seizing Constantinople (now Istanbul). Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War The conflict was a clash of cultures: on one side was an autocratic military state built on conscript armies, censorship and internal surveillance, which was defeated by a coalition of progressive western states, relatively inclusive politics and technologically advanced economies. While Russia suppressed news of defeats, incompetence and casualties, Britain’s war was conducted with maximum disclosure through the House of Commons and a free press. An upshot of this resulting war of words was an enduring, if misleading, impression of failure in Britain – widely attributed to amateurish aristocratic leaders – while highlighting the contribution of figures such as Florence Nightingale. It is high time the grotesque caricature of the Crimean War as restricted to a series of blundering military operations outside Sevastopol be laid to rest. In the 21st century, Russia’s attacks on Georgia and Ukraine have attempted to restore the nation’s control over its old empire, and have revived the aggressive rhetoric of faith and nationalism that shaped decisions back in 1853. Putin’s politics rely on war, anxiety, conquest and the exploitation of the powerful presence of the Crimean War in Russian culture. (Leo Tolstoy’s experiences at Sevastopol, for example, shaped the battle scenes in his epic War and Peace.) As with 1853–56, the events of 2022 have exposed Russia’s economic and technological weaknesses and its dependence on foreign capital, technology and markets. Read more | The major innovations of the Crimean War The Crimean War was won by applying economic pressure, blocking bulky Russian exports and denying the Russians access to international capital markets. Faced with mounting losses, humiliating defeats, bankruptcy and a growing coalition of enemies, the regime realised its survival depended on making peace. I doubt anything has changed. This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
The major innovations of the Crimean War
Thanks to a host of 19th-century innovations, the Crimean conflict became the first truly ‘modern’ war
Weaponry When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, fewer than 40 years had passed since the Napoleonic Wars. Yet the methods and technology used by both sides were a world apart from those in that earlier conflict, which had pockmarked Europe in the opening decades of the 19th century. Many new weapons and technologies were deployed for the first time, hence Crimea later being defined by many observers as the ‘first modern war’. One major advance was in rifle technology. The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket had been swiftly approved by the British government and put into mass production. In combination with the Minié musket ball, a hollow-based bullet that expanded when fired, Enfields put the allies at a distinct advantage over the Russians when it came to accuracy and inflicting casualties. The navies of both sides, however, adopted shell-firing guns – a technology that the Russians had utilised during the early naval battles against the Ottomans before the British and French joined proceedings. The war was also the first to see widespread use of mines, both on land and at sea. The Russian navy particularly favoured their deployment, setting more than 1,500 sea mines in the Gulf of Finland to deter any sorties by the Anglo-French fleets towards St Petersburg. The rules of engagement – or, at least, the methods of engagement – were now changed forever. Warships The Crimean War is undeniably the point in military history at which the irresistibility of steam power in naval battles is universally acknowledged. Although the fleets of both sides were a mixture of sailing ships and steam-powered vessels, the greater number of modern ships built by the allies put them in control of the waters of the Black Sea. With the Russians only in possession of seven steam frigates, the rest of its more antiquated fleet were easily outmanoeuvred and outflanked by the allies’ speedier and more agile steam-driven vessels. Read more | 8 battles that shaped the Crimean War Along with the heralding of widespread naval warfare under steam, the battles on the Black Sea accelerated the notion of armoured ships. The French were in the vanguard of their design and, after joining with Britain to enter the war, they shared plans for ironclad warships with the Royal Navy. After testing, the British government decided to build five of their own. France’s armoured ships were dispatched to Crimea the following year, where their role in destroying the Russian fortress at Kinburn on 17 October 1855 prompted all navies to embark on building such vessels. Photography Accompanying the newspaper reports updating readers about events in Crimea were photographs from the war. While artists were seconded to the region by publications such as The Illustrated London News, the development of photography made the Crimean War, as historian Yakup Bektas has declared, “the most illustrated war to date and helped turn it into a visual spectacle”. On the podcast | The Crimean War: everything you wanted to know When exhibited, the photography from the battlefields had an impact that sketches did not possess. Although the images that appeared in the press were actually engravings based on the photographs (the technology to reproduce them in newspapers had not yet been created), readers were given a greater sense of the reality of the conflict – even if the images being published were a matter for subjective decision making, and such editorial choices were susceptible to the requirements of propaganda. Arguably the most notable photographer in the Crimea was Roger Fenton, who travelled around with his two assistants in a horse-drawn ‘Photographic Van’. Despite his reputation, the Lancastrian seemed to sidestep capturing scenes of brutality and distress. Perhaps with one eye on posterity (and the other on self-preservation), he preferred to spend his time as a portrait photographer, usually with the upper echelons of the British military as his focus. Fenton was also accused of manipulating and even staging some of his non-portrait work. Nonetheless, whether completely honest, Fenton and others helped deliver a sense of the human element of war. Railways The lengthy siege of Sevastopol presented the British military with a logistical headache. When its men and equipment arrived in Crimea by ship, they disembarked at the port of Balaclava. Although the trenches surrounding Sevastopol were only 10 miles away, transporting the cargo – both human and mechanical – was exceedingly tricky. Not only were the weather conditions frequently atrocious, but the pitted and rough uphill terrain made for progress that was slow at best, and perilous at worst. Help was on its way, though. Back in Britain, a pair of entrepreneurs, Samuel Morton Peto and Edward Betts, were among the pre-eminent railway builders of the Victorian age. Having read about the conditions in Crimea in the eyewitness accounts of The Times correspondent William Howard Russell, Peto and Betts went into partnership with another railway man, Thomas Brassey, to propose the construction of a simple and effective line between Balaclava and the trenches above Sevastopol. This was no money-making scheme, incidentally, since the trio charged the British government only at cost price. Progress was speedy, too: after the trains and track parts shipped in December 1854, the line was finished and fully functional within four months. Enjoying a rather high-falutin name, the Grand Crimean Central Railway contributed greatly to the ending of the siege; able to withstand the heavy rains to deliver arms, supplies and personnel to the trenches while returning sick and injured troops to Balaclava. On the podcast | Railway history: everything you wanted to know Portable stoves As if the fighting of the Crimean War hadn’t claimed enough casualties, the death toll was being added to by allied troops falling gravely ill (particularly those in the British Army). One key reason was food poisoning. Soldiers were being catered for by those with little or no experience in cooking – let alone cooking en masse – and, accordingly, a frequently served dish of the day was undercooked meat. Popularly regarded as the best chef in Britain, the Frenchman Alexis Soyer visited the troops in Crimea and was shocked by the fare being served up. By then, he had already been developing a stove upon which food could be cooked properly whatever the location. In order to meet the needs of the British soldiers, the so-called Soyer Stove swiftly went into production. The celebrated chef also trained the cooks of each regiment how to provide solid, and more importantly non-dangerous, sustenance to their men. Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War Cases of food poisoning fell as a result and a version of the Soyer Stove would go on to be used by the British Army as recently as the Falklands War in 1982. As such, Soyer saved many lives. “War is the evil genius of a time,” the Frenchman wrote in his memoir of his Crimean experience, A Culinary Campaign (1857), “but good food for all is a daily and paramount necessity.” Telegraphy The Crimean War saw the adoption of another new technology that modernised the processes and procedures of both warfare and the reporting of warfare: telegraphy. It revolutionised communication, whether between the front lines and governments, or between war correspondents and newspaper readers. A crucial player in this revolution was RS Newall & Company, arguably the leaders in the manufacture and laying of submarine cables. In late 1854, the company was commissioned by the British government to connect, by electric telegraph, Balaclava with the port city of Varna on the western shore of the Black Sea (in modern-day Bulgaria). Two months later, the French and British agreed to connect their respective governments with their troops by constructing a new telegraph line between Varna and Bucharest, the latter being already connected to Paris and London. Read more | Why did Britain fight the Crimean War? Until then, communications from the sharp end of the war had taken up to five days before reaching the telegraph station in Bucharest, starting with a two-day steamer voyage from Balaclava to Varna that was then followed by a three-day horse ride. With a telegraph line now stretching from the front line right to Whitehall, communication was near-instant. The British public, eager to learn of the latest developments from Crimea, enjoyed this immediacy as they were now able to read the dispatches of Fleet Street’s war correspondents soon after engagements had occurred. This exciting technological advance did carry a downside, though. Russian agents in London could update their superiors in St Petersburg through these fresh reports in the public press. Nige Tassell is a journalist who specialises in history This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
Professor Andrew Lambert explains how the Crimean War came to an end, and the effect it had on Europe and beyond
After a siege that lasted nearly 11 months, the fate of Sevastopol was settled when the Royal Navy occupied the Sea of Azov, cutting Russian supply lines to the Crimea. Without food, ammunition and fodder for the cavalry, Russia could no longer hold the fortress. It fell on 9 September 1855 after a brilliant French assault. This triumph was enough for Napoleon III: having restored military glory, he wanted to end the conflict and focus on redrawing the map of western Europe and expanding the borders of the French empire. Also, among his subjects, the war had become deeply unpopular as the human cost had mounted. Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War As for the British, they concentrated on destroying Sevastopol dockyard to ensure that Russia would not command the Black Sea for a generation. With Sevastopol lost, and Russia facing bankruptcy, domestic unrest and further defeats, the new tsar Alexander II was forced to admit defeat. Russia could not resist a sophisticated maritime-economic offensive that left the coast open to further attacks, including a widely publicised plan for the Royal Navy to escalate the war by bombarding St Petersburg the following spring. The pressure on Russia increased when Sweden joined the allied coalition in November 1855, and Austria threatened to follow. By early 1856, the tsar was ready to talk. Coming to terms With the resulting Treaty of Paris, Russia recognised the political and territorial integrity of the Ottoman empire; demilitarised the Black Sea; gave up its claims to guarantee the civil rights of Christians in Ottoman areas; and opened the Danube River for international trade. Britain then demanded the demilitarisation of the Åland Islands, which enabled the Royal Navy to dominate the Baltic. The peace, however, came just as industrial mobilisation was transforming British strategic power. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was left to regret lost opportunities to push Russia out of recently conquered regions in the Caucasus, the Baltic and beyond. Signed on 30 March 1856, the treaty appeared to be a triumph for Napoleon III’s empire. But the victory parade at Spithead on England’s south coast three weeks later told a different story. Queen Victoria reviewed the fleet that had been assembled to attack St Petersburg, accompanied by diplomats, press reporters and large crowds. Read more | 8 battles that shaped the Crimean War The unparalleled display of force served to emphasise that the war had been won by British maritime and economic power, with the support of French and Ottoman troops. It sustained British deterrence for decades: mobilising a ‘Baltic’ fleet halted Russian invasions of Turkey and Afghanistan in the years that followed. Britain would not have to fight another great power for 58 years, and so could focus on economic expansion and domestic reform. Redrawing the map In the Crimean War, the first major conflict of the industrial era, Britain and France dominated the seas with steam-powered ships and land battles with modern rifles – tools that Russia lacked. This was the first war when correspondents reported from the front line via telegraph cables and photographers captured images of conflict. It saw the first use of mass-produced weapons, armoured warships, submarine mines and railway lines. Britain’s immense merchant fleet sustained campaigns in four distant theatres, while the war inspired the development of modern nursing and new items of clothing, including the cardigan and the balaclava. On the podcast | The Crimean War: everything you wanted to know Elsewhere, the lessons of the war shaped the strategy, tactics and sartorial styles of the American Civil War shortly afterwards. In 1861, Union troops adopted the uniforms, kepis (caps) and facial hair of the elite French regiments that captured Sevastopol. In Britain, the ceremonial uniforms of the Guards, Horse Guards and Royal Horse Artillery remain those of the Crimea. Russia ceased to be a great power for several decades, turning inwards to rebuild a shattered economy and build the industries and infrastructure for modern war, including the abolition of serfdom to release the necessary manpower. Russia’s retreat opened the flood gates of nationalism in eastern and central Europe; the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia joined the Allies in 1855 to agitate for Italian unification, a project completed within a decade. Yet the most significant consequence of Russian weakness would be Otto von Bismarck’s creation, in 1871, of a German empire that would dominate European politics for the next half century; a dominance founded on the ruins of Napoleon III’s empire. Still, Russia remained aggressive, seizing a huge block of territory from Imperial China in 1858 and continuing to advance against weaker foes in Central Asia until every independent regime between Moscow and the Chinese border was destroyed. Ultimately, it would be Russian ambitions in the Balkans that sparked World War I. Want to know more? Read our ultimate guide to the Crimean War. This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
From the first clash along the Danube to the fierce fight to take Sevastopol, we examine the conflict’s most important encounters
The battle of Oltenița – 4 November 1853 8,000 Ottomans v 6,000 Russians Killed: 30 Ottomans, 600–700 Russians The war’s first military engagement came several months before Britain and France joined the hostilities. Near the village of Oltenița in the region of Wallachia (now part of Romania), the Ottomans established fortified positions on the banks of the River Danube, ready to defend their territory against the steadily advancing Russians under the command of General Peter Dannenberg. As his troops approached these defences, Dannenberg moved his infantrymen to the front. However, despite some of them managing to breach the fortifications’ moat, the Russians suffered heavy losses and were recalled, clearly unprepared for the level of artillery required to destabilise the Ottomans’ defences. Perhaps surprisingly, the Ottomans didn’t pursue the retreating Russians, content to have merely contained the opening battle of what would be a drawn-out war. But while not a crucial victory militarily, Oltenița’s impact was more to do with psychology and morale. The battle of Sinop – 30 November 1853 12 Ottoman ships v 11 Russian ships Killed: 3,000 Ottomans, 37 Russians Less than a month after Russian progress on land had been derailed at Oltenița, the first naval battle of the war gave Russia a significant victory. At the port of Sinop on the Black Sea’s southern shore, a Russian fleet – including six battleships – attacked a dozen smaller Ottoman ships in the town’s harbour, all but one of which were sunk or run aground. The Russian squadron remained intact. As well as benefitting from the element of surprise, this dominant victory was testament to the Russians’ deployment of explosive shells which, far more destructive than cannonballs, decimated the wooden hulls of the Ottoman vessels. Not content with demobilising these ships in such a brutal and unrelenting manner, the Russians then turned their aim on Sinop itself, shelling the town and claiming the lives of a great many civilians. On the podcast | The Crimean War: everything you wanted to know Back in St Petersburg, the authorities were both relieved and ecstatic that the hefty financial investment made in upgrading the Russian navy had produced such an emphatic result. Elsewhere in Europe, the unprovoked nature of the attack in Sinop drew instant condemnation; the word ‘massacre’ was never far from critics’ lips. Deep concern over both Russia’s intentions and its naval firepower fuelled and strengthened the argument for western Europe to become engaged militarily in the conflict. Amid a growing anti-Russian fervour, British and French warships entered the waters of the Black Sea in January 1854. The war was no longer simply Ottoman versus Russian. The battle of the Alma – 20 September 1854 58,000 allies v 37,500 Russians Killed or wounded: 4,100 allies, 5,000 Russians In mid-September 1854, an allied force of British, French and Ottoman troops landed on the Crimean Peninsula in a move not foreseen by Russia, which hadn’t predicted a land campaign as winter approached. Under the command of Britain’s Lord Raglan and France’s Armand-Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud, the combined forces were vast in number. Such was the scale of the allied effort – hundreds of vessels laden with armour, horses and men had crossed the Black Sea – that it took five days for the entire party to disembark before the massed ranks began to march towards the strategically significant port of Sevastopol, around 35 miles away. After a comparatively minor clash between the allies and the Russians at the Bulganak River, stiffer resistance was in place seven miles away at the mouth of the Alma River, where the Russians had taken up position atop the Alma Heights, a series of bluffs and cliffs which gave them a strategic advantage. The allies’ tactics, largely drawn up by the cholera-riven Saint-Arnaud rather than the out-of-his-depth Raglan, saw the French attack the Russian left flank, the latter being surprised at their enemy’s ability to scale the cliffs. The British assaults on the Russian right flank overran key bastions, but their superior firepower (in the form of Minié rifles that fired hollow-based bullets), combined with the French capture of the Alma Heights, drove the Russian army into a full retreat. Remarkably, neither the British or French forces pursued them to Sevastopol, with Saint-Arnaud and Lord Raglan both blaming each other for failing to seize the opportunity. However, Raglan had his eye on a different port: Balaclava. The siege of Sevastopol: 17 October 1854 – 11 September 1855 Killed: 128,387 allies, 102,000 Russians The capture of Sevastopol – ahead of other ports on the Crimea Peninsula – had been a primary objective for the allied powers for one overriding reason: it was the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the means through which Nicholas I intended to secure footholds across the Mediterranean basin. Destroying the fleet – or at least disabling it – was crucial in stymying the tsar’s expansionist ambitions. The allies chose to pen in Russian forces in the city, and in the process, they ended up creating one of the most famous sieges in history. While the allies had 120 guns pointed at Sevastopol, both from the Black Sea and from the uplands south of the city, the Russians had three times as many to use for their defence, utilising the naval artillery repurposed after they had scuttled in excess of a dozen of their own ships to prevent the allies’ capture of them. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Crimean War While many significant battles were won and lost beyond the siege lines the allies had constructed, the siege itself became a feature for nearly the next 12 months. The Russians withstood half a dozen heavyweight bombardments in Sevastopol during this time, but the sixth was particularly damaging, claiming between 2,000 and 3,000 Russian casualties on each of its three days. The heroic defence eventually mutated into a reluctant abandonment and retreat. The battle of Balaclava: 25 October 1854 28,000 allies v 25,000 Russians Killed or wounded: 615 allies, 627 Russians Following their retreat at the battle of the Alma, the Russians spent the next month regrouping ahead of the next skirmish. While redeployed personnel from the Russian navy defended Sevastopol from inside the city, General Alexander Menshikov’s soldiers operated beyond the allies’ siege lines, able to move around the countryside as they tried to find the weakest section to attack. They found it to the south, around the town of Balaclava. Lord Raglan had moved his men there after Alma, but didn’t have enough troops to offer the most watertight defence of the siege’s right flank. The Russians’ first attack was on Ottoman forts on the Vorontsov Heights, and it was a successful encounter, with the Ottomans forced to retreat after an initial spell of stubborn defence. The Russians then approached the second defensive line in the region, one formed by Ottoman infantrymen and the British 93rd Highland Regiment. At dawn, the regiment’s commander, Major-General Colin Campbell, outlined to his troops what was about to occur at what was the last defensive line between the Russians and the town of Balaclava. “There is no retreat from here, men,” he told them bluntly. “You must die where you stand.” Without the numbers to set them up four-deep, as was customary, Campbell’s defences were half as shallow. In their red uniform jackets, the 93rd met the oncoming Russian cavalry charge with two volleys of fire: one from 800 yards away and a second from 500 yards. This was sufficient. The Russians turned and fled, although Campbell had to order the 93rd not to pursue them. “93rd! 93rd! Damn all that eagerness!” The valley of death His advice might have served the equally eager Lord Raglan. Keen to deter the Russians from making off with captured British guns, he ordered that the Light Brigade go after them. Unencumbered by decent armour for either man or horse, the Light Brigade could cover ground quickly and thus disrupt the Russians fleeing with such heavy armaments. So, into the valley rode the Light Brigade; “the valley of Death” as Lord Tennyson’s poem would later dub it. Read more | Why did Britain fight the Crimean War? However, a miscommunication had taken them right into the heart of set-in Russian troops who had the British ringed on three sides of the valley. Chaos ensued. A correspondent from the London Illustrated News saw “a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls”, while a French onlooker couldn’t understand the logic of Raglan’s order: “it is not war. It is madness.” Regardless of who was responsible for the misdirected attack, it terrified the Russians, who never again came out on horseback to face British cavalry. The battle of Inkerman: 5 November 1854 15,700 allies v 40,500 Russians Killed or wounded: 4,676 allies, 11,959 Russians After the Charge of the Light Brigade had seen the deaths of courageous soldiers led by misguided generals, the battle of Inkerman was a much different affair. Largely due to the day’s foggy conditions, the Anglo-French forces mainly fought without orders from on high. Largely thanks to their own initiative, an allied victory ensued. Again attempting to penetrate the long, under-protected allied siege lines around Sevastopol, General Menshikov had ordered another attack, this time in the vicinity of Mount Inkerman. He had up to 42,000 men at his disposal, although the area’s hilly geography made such numbers impractical. Still, the Russians greatly outnumbered the 2,700-strong 2nd Division, with British generals swiftly calling for reinforcements. The splintered nature of the ensuing battle, caused by both weather conditions and terrain, meant that officers could only direct the fighting immediately before them. Captain Edward Hamley of the British 1st Division explained that “once engaged, every man was his own general”. As such, Inkerman became known as ‘The Soldiers’ Battle’. Bolstered by the arrival of two 18-pounder guns, which drove off the Russian field artillery, the allies successfully held their position. The Russians would never launch another land-based attack on the allies’ siege lines again. The battle of Eupatoria: 17 February 1855 32,000 allies (almost exclusively Ottomans) v 19,000 Russians Killed: 91 allies, 168 Russians Sevastopol wasn’t the only strategically crucial Crimean port. Fifty miles to the north, the Ottomans controlled the city of Eupatoria, an advanced base near the ‘neck’ of the peninsula that was well-placed to cut Russian supply lines. On 17 February 1855, the Russians attempted to capture the port, but soon encountered problems in penetrating its defences. Read more | A timeline of the Crimean War Having advanced to the city walls, Russian leaders discovered that the protective water-filled ditches surrounding them were too deep to be able to launch an assault; they simply didn’t offer a firm base from which the walls could be scaled. By 10 o’clock that morning, the Russians were already in retreat, a withdrawal hastened by Ottoman cavalry and infantry charging them. The battle of Malakoff: 8 September 1854 70,500 French v 59,500 Russians Killed or wounded: 8,000 French, 13,000 Russians The siege of Sevastopol had been prolonged thanks to Russia’s defence of the city’s harbour. On its south side, this protection was provided by the Malakoff-Kurgan ridge, on which stood a stone tower, the home of five heavy cannons. In September 1855, French forces tried to smash the siege’s stalemate by attacking the Malakoff fort. After a day of intense combat, the fort fell and the French tricolour was raised up its flagpole. It had been a bloody encounter, but it was to be the war’s last major battle. And it felt like the climax, too; no fewer than 19 generals on either side lost their lives, and the capture of the fort meant the capture of Sevastopol. But the clash did not decide the war. It would be factors away from the battlefield – such as bankruptcy, and pressure from Austria and Sweden – that would leave Russia unable to fight on. Nige Tassell is a journalist who specialises in history This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
Discover the most important moments in the story of the Crimean War with our handy timeline...
Follow the events of the Crimean War with our timeline: 1821–29 The Ottoman empire’s rule over Greece comes to an end following the Greek War of Independence, serving to highlight the once-mighty empire’s decline. 1829 The Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 ends in Russian protection of the Ottoman-held Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) in the Balkans. The Treaty of Edirne also grants Russia access to shipping through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits. On the podcast | The Crimean War: everything you wanted to know September 1833 Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I labels the Ottoman empire the “sick man of Europe” while meeting with Prince Metternich of Austria. 1852 French president Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) lobbies the Ottoman empire to recognise France as the protector of Christian monks and pilgrims in Jerusalem. In response, Nicholas I insists that Russia be named protector of the city’s Holy Places and of all Orthodox Christians across the Ottoman empire. February 1853 On a mission to Constantinople, Russia’s Prince Menshikov echoes Nicholas I’s earlier demands, again calling for a Russian protectorate over the Ottoman empire’s 12 million Orthodox Christians. July 1853 Russia occupies the Ottoman-held Danubian Principalities, threatening Austria’s economic lifeline along the Danube. 4 October 1853 The Ottoman empire declares war on Russia, leading to the conflict’s first battle at Olteniţa, Wallachia, exactly one month later. 30 November 1853 The Russian Black Sea fleet obliterates 15 Ottoman warships anchored in the harbour at Sinop, northern Anatolia, killing nearly 3,000 Turks. 28 March 1854 Britain and France declare war on Russia after their ultimatum demanding that Russia withdraws its forces from the Danubian Principalities expires. The British and French, along with the Ottomans, will later become collectively known as the allies. August 1854 Anglo-French supremacy over the Baltic Sea is secured following the destruction of the Bomarsund fortress in Åland. Austria occupies the Danubian Principalities after Russia’s withdrawal, as Nicholas I seeks to avoid Vienna formally joining the conflict. Read more | Why did Britain fight the Crimean War? 14 September 1854 Allied forces begin landing along the beaches of Kalamita Bay on the Crimean Peninsula’s western shore. Preparations are soon underway to besiege the main Russian port of Sevastopol, some 30 miles south of the allied camp. 20 September 1854 Russia loses the battle of the Alma, leading to the start of the allied siege of Sevastopol on 17 October. 25 October 1854 The battle of Balaclava ends with the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade, during which 110 British men are killed and about 130 wounded. 4 November 1854 Florence Nightingale and 38 fellow nurses from Britain arrive at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari (a district of Constantinople) and later begin caring for injured troops brought in from the battles of Balaclava and Inkerman, amid squalid conditions. 26 January 1855 The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, keen to gain Britain and France’s support for the cause of Italian unification, joins the war on the allied side and sends an expeditionary force of 15,000 troops to the Crimea. March 1855 Nurse Mary Seacole arrives in Constantinople and proceeds to the Crimea, where she founds the British Hotel for convalescing soldiers. 2 March 1855 Nicholas I dies in St Petersburg and is succeeded by his son, Alexander II, as Russian tsar. 9 August 1855 Sveaborg, a major Russian fortress off Helsinki, is destroyed by an Anglo-French fleet, leaving the naval base of Kronstadt – and thus St Petersburg – vulnerable to allied attacks. 8–11 September 1855 The French capture the Malakoff fortification near Sevastopol and the Russians abandon the city. The siege ends on 11 September. 29 January 1856 The Victoria Cross is instituted as the highest award in the British honours system. The medals, the first of which are awarded to 111 veterans of the Crimean War, are alleged to have been cast from Russian cannons captured at Sevastopol. 1 February 1856 Faced with the prospect of Austria joining the war on the side of the allies, Alexander II accepts preliminary peace terms to bring the conflict to an end. 30 March 1856 The Treaty of Paris concludes hostilities after a five-day peace conference. Russia cedes Southern Bessarabia (at the mouth of the Danube), the Black Sea is demilitarised, and the Danube is opened to international shipping. 3 Mar 1861 Serfdom is abolished across the Russian empire, the Crimean War having exposed a dire need for social reforms. April 1877–March 1878 The Russians and Ottomans fight another war amid rising nationalist tensions across the Balkans and attempts by Russia to recover their lost territory. Romania and several other states become independent nations following the Ottoman empire’s defeat in 1878. Want to find out more? Read our ultimate guide to the Crimean War This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed