Encyclopedia
The Crimean War lasted from 28 March 1853 until 1 April 1856 and was fought between
Imperial Russia on one side and an alliance of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the
Second French Empire and the
Kingdom of Sardinia, and the
Ottoman Empire on the other. The majority of the conflict took place on the
Crimean peninsula in the
Black Sea, with military conflicts also occurring in western
Turkey, the
Baltic Sea region and in the
Pacific Ocean.
The war is generally seen as the first modern conflict and "introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare."
Buildup to war
Conflict over the Holy Land
The immediate root causes of the Crimean War can be traced back to the 1851
coup d'état in France which brought
Louis Bonaparte, nephew of
Napoleon Bonaparte, to power as dictator. Dissolving the National Assembly by the end of 1851, Bonaparte issued a plebiscite on a new constitution that allowed him to act as president of France for more than a single term. In the following year, he declared himself Napoleon III and began harnessing as much support as possible within France to make his rule legitimate. With the
Roman Catholics being the largest group of possible supporters, Napoleon had his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Marquis de Lavalette, force the Ottomans to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the Holy Land.
Quickly, the Russians made counter-claims to this newest change in "authority" in the Holy Land. Pointing to two more recent 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 Christian faith in the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon III responded with a show of force, sending a warship, the
Charlemagne, to the Black Sea, a "clear violation" of the London Straits Convention. France's startling show of force, combined with aggressive diplomacy and money, changed Sultan
Abd-ul-Mejid I's mind on the matter of the Holy Land and its protection. The newest treaty, between France and the Ottomans, confirmed France and the Catholic Church as the supreme Christian organization in the Holy Land, supreme control over the various Christian holy places, and gave the keys to the
Church of the Nativity, previously in the hands of the Greek Orthodox Church, to the Catholic Church.
Napoleon III pulled off a stunning diplomatic success in
Istanbul and support in France for him grew tremendously. However, Napoleon appeared to misjudge the religious convictions of
Tsar Nicholas I. Angry over losing the diplomatic war to France in the
Porte, the Russian tsar had his 4th and 5th Army Corps mobilized and deployed along the
Danube River and had Count
Karl Nesselrode, his foreign minister, begin a diplomatic war to regain Russian prestige with the Ottomans. As Nesselrode, a veteran diplomat, began forming his strategy for the tsar, he privately confided to the British ambassador in
St. Petersburg, Sir George Seymour:
Further, Nesselrode implied to Seymour that Russia would not hestitate to use its military to backup and enforce its diplomacy. Nesselrode believed war to already be inevitable if France did not back down. On January 2, 1853, in a letter to the Russian ambassador in
London, Nesselrode further confided that Russia would 'face the whole world alone and without allies,' and also noted that war with Britain was likely as well.
The diplomatic front
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 interferring in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans, as well as to prevent them from allying together. Nicholas believed that by playing on anti-French sentiments in England, he would be able to split France and Britain on the question of the Holy Places. Further, the Tsar was sure that neither
Prussia nor
Austria would enter the conflict, firstly because the question of German unification was in stalemate and secondly because the Tsar had kept the two countries from going to war in 1850
In January 1853, Nicholas began courting Britain through Seymour. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand Imperial Russia further then they already were, but that he had an obligation to Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire. He further expanded on the belief that the Ottoman Empire was the "sick man of Europe" and that Russia and Britain should act in concert to parcel out the Ottoman lands when that Empire fell. It is here that Nicholas made a diplomatic blunder. Misreading Britain's position, Nicholas believed that the two countries had come to a common understanding on the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The Tsar believed that in any conflict between him and the Sultan, Britain would not interfere. Unfortunately, this was not Britain's position. The British government feared any territorial gains by Russia that would increase its influence in the region of Turkey, as well as Russia gaining control of the
Bosphorus, would threaten British possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean and its possessions in India.
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 February 16 on the steam-powered warship
Gromovnik. Menshikov wasted no time in breaking protocol at the Porte, and 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 Istanbul 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 considerable 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 Istanbul. 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.
The Ottomans hold firm
At the same time, however, the British government of Prime Minister
Aberdeen sent Lord Stratford. Through skillful 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 , using the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the Holy Places as a pretext. Nicholas believed that the European powers would not 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 Moldavia and Wallachia , Great Britain, seeking to maintain the security of the Ottoman Empire, sent a fleet to the
Dardanelles, where it was joined by 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 Russia and Turkey. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I; it was, however, rejected by Abd-ul-Mejid I, 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
Saint Petersburg. Great Britain and France set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia did not 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 the entire Ottoman fleet at the
battle of Sinop on 30 November 1853, thereby making it possible for Russia to land and supply its forces on the Turkish shores fairly easily. The destruction of the Turkish fleet and the threat of Russian expansion alarmed both Great Britain and France, who stepped forth in defence of the Ottoman Empire. In 1853, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian principalities, Great Britain and France declared war.
Peace attempts
Nicholas presumed that in return for the support rendered during the Revolutions of 1848, Austria would side with him, or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops in the nearby Danubian Principalities. When Great Britain and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Principalities, Austria supported them; and, though it did not immediately declare war on Russia, it refused to guarantee its neutrality. When, in the summer of 1854, Austria made another demand for the withdrawal of troops, Russia feared that Austria would enter the war.
Though the original grounds for war were lost when Russia withdrew its troops from the Danubian Principalities, Great Britain and France failed to cease 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 the cessation of hostilities, including:
- a demand that 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 Danube River.
When the Tsar refused to comply with the Four Points, the Crimean War commenced.
The Crimean War begins
The siege of Sevastopol
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 battle 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 was mortally wounded in the head by a
sniper shot, and died on 30 June 1855. The city was captured in September 1855.
In the same year, the Russians besieged and occupied the Turkish fortress of
Kars.
Azov Campaign and the siege of Taganrog
In spring 1855, the allied British-French commanders decided to send an expedition corps into the
Azov Sea to undermine Russian communications and supplies to besieged
Sevastopol. On May 12, 1855 British-French war ships entered the
Kerch Strait and destroyed the coast battery of the Kamishevaya Bay. On May 21, 1855 the gunboats and armed steamers attacked the seaport of
Taganrog, the most important hub in terms of its proximity to
Rostov on Don and due to vast resources of food, especially bread, wheat, barley and rye that were amassed in the city after the breakout of Crimean War that put an end to its exportation.
The Governor of Taganrog,
Yegor Tolstoy and lieutenant-general Ivan Krasnov refused the ultimatum, responding that
Russians never surrender their cities. The British-French squadron began bombardment of
Taganrog during 6.5 hours and landed 300 troops near the
Old Stairway in the downtown Taganrog, who were thrown back by Don Cossacks and volunteer corps.
In July 1855, the allied squadron tried to go past Taganrog to
Rostov on Don, entering the Don River through the Mius River. On July 12, 1855 H.M.S.
Jasper grounded near Taganrog thanks to a fisherman, who repositioned the buoys into shallow waters. The
cossacks captured the gunboat with all of its guns and blew it up. The third siege attempt was made August 19-31, 1855, but the city was already fortified and the squadron could not approach too close for landing operations. The allied fleet left the Gulf of Taganrog on September 2, 1855, with minor military operations along
Azov Sea coast continuing until late Autumn 1855.
Baltic theatre
The
Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the war. The popularisation of events elsewhere has overshadowed the overarching 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 blockade of Russian trade and small raids on less protected parts 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. The raiding 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 ,
Tammisaari ,
Kokkola and
Turku were repulsed.
The burning of tar warehouses and ships in
Oulu and
Raahe led to international criticism, and in Britain, a Mr 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. By autumn, the Allies' fleet left the Baltic for the
White Sea, where they shelled Kola and the
Solovki. Their attempt to storm
Arkhangelsk proved abortive, as was the
siege of Petropavlovsk in
Kamchatka.
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
Russia, 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. 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 Sebastopol", as one American officer put it in 1860 .
Final phase and the peace
Peace negotiations began in 1856 under Nicholas I's successor,
Alexander II. Under the ensuing Treaty of Paris, the "Four Points" plan proposed earlier was largely adhered to; most notably, Russia's special privileges relating to the Danubian Principalities were transferred to the Great Powers as a group. In addition, warships of all nations were perpetually excluded from the Black Sea, once the home to the Russian fleet . Furthermore, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the coast of that sea. 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 Prussia in the
Franco-Prussian War. Whilst Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful
German Empire, the Emperor of France,
Napoleon III, was deposed to permit the formation of a
French Republic. During his reign , Napoleon III, eager for the support of Great Britain, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire, however, did not 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 could not enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.
The Crimean War caused a mass exodus of
Crimean Tatars towards the Ottoman lands, resulting in massive depopulation in the peninsula.
Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria was diplomatically isolated following the war. This led to its defeat in the
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.
Characteristics of the war
The war became infamously known for military and logistical incompetence, epitomised by the
Charge of the Light Brigade which was immortalised in
Tennyson's poem.
Cholera undercut French preparations for the siege of Sevastopol, and a violent storm on the night of 14 November 1854 wrecked nearly thirty vessels with their precious cargoes of medical supplies, food, clothing, and other necessities. The scandalous treatment of wounded soldiers in the desperate winter that followed was reported by war correspondents for newspapers, prompting the work of
Florence Nightingale and introducing modern nursing methods.
Amongst the new techniques used to treat wounded soldiers, a primitive form of ambulances were used for the first time during this conflict.
The Crimean War also introduced the first tactical use of
railways and other modern inventions such as the
telegraph. The Crimean War is also credited by many as being the first modern war, employing 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 Crimean War occasioned the introduction of hand rolled "paper cigars" —
cigarettes — to French and British troops, who copied their Turkish comrades in using old newspaper for rolling when their cigar-leaf rolling tobacco ran out or dried and crumbled.
It has been suggested that the Russian defeat in the Crimean War may have been a factor in by the Czar, Alexander II, in 1861.
The British army abolished Sale of commissions as a direct result of the disaster at the
Battle of Balaclava.
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's causes lay in the existing rivalry between the British and the Russians in other areas such as Afghanistan . Conflicts over control of holy places in Jerusalem led to aggressive actions in the Balkans, and around the Dardanelles
...
.
- It was the first war where the electric telegraph started to have a significant effect, with the first 'live' war reporting to The Times is a national newspaper [i] published daily in the United Kingdom [i] since 1785, and unde ...
by William Howard Russell
...
, and British generals' reduced independence of action from
London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.
Prominent military commanders
...
commanders ...
Berwick-upon-Tweed
There is a rather charming but apocryphal story, recently repeated on the BBC comedy programme, QI, that goes that when the UK joined the war, Great Britain, Ireland,
Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions declared war. Berwick-upon-Tweed had been long disputed by England and Scotland, and hence was often treated as a separate entity. When the war ended, Berwick was accidentally left out of the text of the peace treaty. The Mayor of Berwick-upon-Tweed was subsequently visited by an official of the
Soviet Union in 1966 to negotiate a peace settlement, declaring that "Russians can now sleep safely,"
Crimean War in fiction
- 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 - which is also where she met Landon Parke-Laine and where her brother Anton Next was killed.
- Beryl Bainbridge's novel Master Georgie is set in the Crimean War.
- George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman at the Charge is also set in the Crimean War.
- Stephen Baxter's novel Anti-Ice starts with the siege of Sebastopol, which is shortened dramatically by a new Anti-Ice weapon. The book asks the question - what if nuclear weapons had existed in Victorian times?
- 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.
See also
Notes
References
- Bamgart, Winfried . The Crimean War, 1853-1856, Arnold Publishers. ISBN 0-340-61465-X
- Ponting, Clive . The Crimean War, Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-7390-4
- Pottinger Saab, Anne . The Origins of the Crimean Alliance, University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-0699-7
- Rich, Norman . Why the Crimean War: A Cautionary Tale, McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-052255-3
- Royle, Trevor . Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-6416-5
- Schroeder, Paul W. . Austria, Great Britain, and the Crimean War: The Destruction of the European Concert, Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-0742-7
- Wetzel, David. . The Crimean War: A Diplomatic History, Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-88033-086-4
Additional works
- Hamley, The War in the Crimea,
- Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea,
- Russell, The War in the Crimea, 1854-56,
- Marx, The Eastern Question, 1853-56,
- Lodomir, La guerre de 1853-56,
- Kovalevski, Der Krieg Russlands mit der Türkei in den Jahren 1853-54,
- Rein, Die Teilnahme Sardiniens am Krimkrieg und de öffentliche Meinung in Italien,
External links
