Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Crimean War shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Crimean War offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Crimean War at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Crimean War? Wrong! If the Crimean War is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Crimean War then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Crimean War? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Crimean War and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Crimean War wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Crimean War then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Crimean War site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Crimean War, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Crimean War, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Military Conflict|conflict=Crimean War|partof=|image=|caption=Detail of Franz Roubaud's panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol (1904).],
Balkans,
Black Sea,
Baltic Sea,
Pacific Ocean|combatant1=Allies:
[Second French Empire

Ottoman Empire
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Kingdom of Sardinia
[Bulgarian Legion|strength1=400,000 French
250,000 British
10,000 Sardinian|strength2=2,200,000 Russian
4,000 Bulgarians|casualties1=~100,000 French Napoleon III, Pierre Milza, Perrin edition, 2004
35,000 Turkish
17,500 British
2,194 Sardinian
killed, wounded and died of disease|casualties2=~134,000
killed, wounded and died of disease-->

The Crimean War (1854–1856) was fought between Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Most of the conflict took place on the Crimea, 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."Royle. Preface

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 of France had his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire force the Ottomans to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the Holy Land.Royle. Pg 19

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 Christendom 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. France's show of force, combined with aggressive diplomacy and money, induced Sultan Abdülmecid I to accept a new treaty, confirming France and the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme Christian authority in the Holy Land with control over the Christian holy places and possession of the keys to the Church of the Nativity, previously held by the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.Royle. Pg 20

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia 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:

dispute 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.Royle. Pg 21

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. Henry Wilkin, 11th Hussars, British Army. Photo by Roger Fenton

Nicholas began courting Britain through Seymour. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand Imperial Russia further, but that he had an obligation to Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.

The Tsar next dispatched a diplomat, Aleksandr Sergeyevich 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, 1st Baron Strathnairn, 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 Sea cruise and head for Istanbul. However, Rose's actions were not backed up by the British admiral in command of the squadron, James Whitley Deans Dundas, who resented the diplomat for believing he could interfere in the Admiralty's business. Within a week, Rose's actions were canceled. 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 George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen sent Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. Through skilful diplomacy, Lord Stratford convinced the Sultan to reject the treaty, which compromised the independence of the Turks. Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield 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 Czar marched his armies into Moldova and Valahia (in Romanian, known and under the names of Moldavia and Wallachia, Ottoman principalities 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 Austrian Empire, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially given Russian involvement in suppressing the Revolutions of 1848., by Ivan Aivazovsky

When the Czar sent his troops into Moldova and Valahia (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 Kingdom of 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 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 Battle of Sinop while they were anchored at the port of Sinop (Turkey) 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 did not 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 London Straits Convention was to be revised;
  • All nations were to be granted access to the River Danube.


  • When the Czar refused to comply with these Four Points, the Crimean War commenced.

    Crimean War Siege of Sevastopol s and Russian soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat at Malakhov Kurgan Sultan Mahmud II and built by the Imperial Naval Arsenal on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, was for many years the largest warship in the world. The 62x17x7 m ship-of-the-line was armed with 128 cannons on 3 decks. She participated in many important naval battles, including the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855) during the Crimean War (1854-1856). She was decommissioned in 1875

    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 scuttling 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 ship of the line, twelve 84-gun 2-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, plus a large number of smaller vessels. Pavel Nakhimov suffered a mortal bullet wound to the head, inflicted by sniper Benjamin Schneider, and died on 30 June 1855. The city was captured in September 1855, after about a year-long siege.

    In the same year, the Russians Siege of Kars 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 Sea was a forgotten theatre of the war. The popularisation of events elsewhere has overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to the St Petersburg. 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 Charles Napier (naval officer) 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 Grand Duchy of Finland coast. during the Crimean War

    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, Åland 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 Milner Gibson demanded in the British 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 defenseless 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 (town) (which was utterly destroyed) and the Solovki. Their attempt to storm Arkhangelsk proved abortive, as was the Siege of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky 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 harbor. 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. in the White Sea by the Royal Navy". A lubok (popular print) from 1868

    Part of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly created blockade mines. Modern naval mine 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. Mining in the Crimean War

    Genitchi Strait A large floating pontoon bridge had been built by the Russians across the Genitchi Strait, Sea of Azov, to connect the town of Genitchi to the Spit of Arabat. The bridge was the Russian's main supply route to reinforce their troops at Sebastopol and therefore became a strategic objective for the British Forces. The destruction of the bridge would force the Russians to travel an extra to deliver their supplies. Two attacks to cut the floating bridge's hawsers had proved unsuccessful, alerting the Russian garrison. A further attempt was made on the 3rd July 1855 using 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 Russian soldiers could be seen marching about on shore, and fired the first round in the breech which drew the gun's securing bolts making it useless. That left six men in a four-oared boat, one of them being Joseph Trewavas, one rifle, ten rounds of ammunition and a cutless apiece to face two hundred enemy who were 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 eighty yards off, had not 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 could not 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 them as they approached the pontoon bridge at Genitchi, but later it was explained by a Russian officer they had no idea the sailors were going to destroy the bridge, believing they were coming in to destroy shipping and therefore held their 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 (1834)) under Rear Admiral David Price and Contre-admiral Febrier-Despointes Siege of Petropavlovsk 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 (in yellow)

    Peace negotiations began in 1856 under Nicholas I's son and successor, Alexander II of Russia. 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 (1856) 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 Third 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, 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 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.

    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 during the Crimean War. Albumen print by "Robertson & Beato", 1855

    The Crimean War was infamously known for military and logistical incompetence. However, it highlighted the work of women who served as army nurses. 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, Mary Seacole, and others and introducing modern nursing methods.

    The Crimean War also introduced 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, leading, eventually, to its abolition.

    Major events of the war , London

    Prominent military commanders , commemorating the Siege of Petropavlovsk in 1854

    Crimean War in fiction

    The Pyramid and the Crimean War

    See also

    Notes Bibliography

    Further reading

    External links

    {{Infobox Military Conflict|conflict=Crimean War|partof=|image=|caption=Detail of Franz Roubaud's panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol (1904).],
    Balkans,
    Black Sea,
    Baltic Sea,
    Pacific Ocean|combatant1=Allies:
    [Second French Empire

    Ottoman Empire
    United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
    Kingdom of Sardinia
    [Bulgarian Legion|strength1=400,000 French
    250,000 British
    10,000 Sardinian|strength2=2,200,000 Russian
    4,000 Bulgarians|casualties1=~100,000 French Napoleon III, Pierre Milza, Perrin edition, 2004
    35,000 Turkish
    17,500 British
    2,194 Sardinian
    killed, wounded and died of disease|casualties2=~134,000
    killed, wounded and died of disease-->

    The Crimean War (1854–1856) was fought between Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Most of the conflict took place on the Crimea, 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."Royle. Preface

    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 of France had his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire force the Ottomans to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the Holy Land.Royle. Pg 19

    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 Christendom 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. France's show of force, combined with aggressive diplomacy and money, induced Sultan Abdülmecid I to accept a new treaty, confirming France and the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme Christian authority in the Holy Land with control over the Christian holy places and possession of the keys to the Church of the Nativity, previously held by the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.Royle. Pg 20

    Tsar Nicholas I of Russia 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:

    dispute 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.Royle. Pg 21

    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. Henry Wilkin, 11th Hussars, British Army. Photo by Roger Fenton

    Nicholas began courting Britain through Seymour. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand Imperial Russia further, but that he had an obligation to Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.

    The Tsar next dispatched a diplomat, Aleksandr Sergeyevich 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, 1st Baron Strathnairn, 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 Sea cruise and head for Istanbul. However, Rose's actions were not backed up by the British admiral in command of the squadron, James Whitley Deans Dundas, who resented the diplomat for believing he could interfere in the Admiralty's business. Within a week, Rose's actions were canceled. 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 George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen sent Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. Through skilful diplomacy, Lord Stratford convinced the Sultan to reject the treaty, which compromised the independence of the Turks. Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield 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 Czar marched his armies into Moldova and Valahia (in Romanian, known and under the names of Moldavia and Wallachia, Ottoman principalities 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 Austrian Empire, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially given Russian involvement in suppressing the Revolutions of 1848., by Ivan Aivazovsky

    When the Czar sent his troops into Moldova and Valahia (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 Kingdom of 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 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 Battle of Sinop while they were anchored at the port of Sinop (Turkey) 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 did not 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 London Straits Convention was to be revised;
  • All nations were to be granted access to the River Danube.


  • When the Czar refused to comply with these Four Points, the Crimean War commenced.

    Crimean War Siege of Sevastopol s and Russian soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat at Malakhov Kurgan Sultan Mahmud II and built by the Imperial Naval Arsenal on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, was for many years the largest warship in the world. The 62x17x7 m ship-of-the-line was armed with 128 cannons on 3 decks. She participated in many important naval battles, including the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855) during the Crimean War (1854-1856). She was decommissioned in 1875

    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 scuttling 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 ship of the line, twelve 84-gun 2-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, plus a large number of smaller vessels. Pavel Nakhimov suffered a mortal bullet wound to the head, inflicted by sniper Benjamin Schneider, and died on 30 June 1855. The city was captured in September 1855, after about a year-long siege.

    In the same year, the Russians Siege of Kars 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 Sea was a forgotten theatre of the war. The popularisation of events elsewhere has overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to the St Petersburg. 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 Charles Napier (naval officer) 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 Grand Duchy of Finland coast. during the Crimean War

    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, Åland 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 Milner Gibson demanded in the British 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 defenseless 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 (town) (which was utterly destroyed) and the Solovki. Their attempt to storm Arkhangelsk proved abortive, as was the Siege of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky 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 harbor. 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. in the White Sea by the Royal Navy". A lubok (popular print) from 1868

    Part of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly created blockade mines. Modern naval mine 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. Mining in the Crimean War

    Genitchi Strait A large floating pontoon bridge had been built by the Russians across the Genitchi Strait, Sea of Azov, to connect the town of Genitchi to the Spit of Arabat. The bridge was the Russian's main supply route to reinforce their troops at Sebastopol and therefore became a strategic objective for the British Forces. The destruction of the bridge would force the Russians to travel an extra to deliver their supplies. Two attacks to cut the floating bridge's hawsers had proved unsuccessful, alerting the Russian garrison. A further attempt was made on the 3rd July 1855 using 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 Russian soldiers could be seen marching about on shore, and fired the first round in the breech which drew the gun's securing bolts making it useless. That left six men in a four-oared boat, one of them being Joseph Trewavas, one rifle, ten rounds of ammunition and a cutless apiece to face two hundred enemy who were 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 eighty yards off, had not 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 could not 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 them as they approached the pontoon bridge at Genitchi, but later it was explained by a Russian officer they had no idea the sailors were going to destroy the bridge, believing they were coming in to destroy shipping and therefore held their 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 (1834)) under Rear Admiral David Price and Contre-admiral Febrier-Despointes Siege of Petropavlovsk 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 (in yellow)

    Peace negotiations began in 1856 under Nicholas I's son and successor, Alexander II of Russia. 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 (1856) 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 Third 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, 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 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.

    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 during the Crimean War. Albumen print by "Robertson & Beato", 1855

    The Crimean War was infamously known for military and logistical incompetence. However, it highlighted the work of women who served as army nurses. 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, Mary Seacole, and others and introducing modern nursing methods.

    The Crimean War also introduced 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, leading, eventually, to its abolition.

    Major events of the war , London

    Prominent military commanders , commemorating the Siege of Petropavlovsk in 1854

    Crimean War in fiction

    The Pyramid and the Crimean War

    See also

    Notes Bibliography

    Further reading

    External links



    Crimean War
    Education on the Internet & Teaching History Online To receive your free copy every week enter your email address below.

    Crimean War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    The Crimean War, also known in Russia as the Eastern War (Russian: Восточная война, Vostochnaya Vojna) (March 1854–February 1856) was fought between Imperial ...

    The Crimean War: An Overview

    Crimean War
    Find out more about Crimean War from The History Channel's free online encyclopedia. ... Crimean War. War (1853–56) between Russia and the allied powers of England, France ...

    Crimean War Research Society
    Crimean War Research Society. PLEASE ENTER: To study the war against Russia, 1853-1856

    Amazon.co.uk: The Crimean War: Queen Victoria's War with the Russian ...
    Amazon.co.uk: The Crimean War: Queen Victoria's War with the Russian Tsars: Hugh Small: Books ... RRP: £17.99 : Price: £13.49 & eligible for Free UK delivery on orders over £15 ...

    Crimean War
    John Company's Cavalryman: The Experiences of a British Soldier in the Crimea, the Persian Campaign: William Johnson Paperback, 140 pages

    ILPH: Crimean War disease resurfaces as horse neglect increases
    ILPH: Crimean War disease resurfaces as horse neglect increases ... There has been an alarming reappearance of a skin disease, Verrucous Pastern Dermatitis, eradicated from horses ...

    The Siege of Sevastopol - Crimean War
    The Siege of The Sevastopol - part of the Crimean War 1854 in the Ukraine with the British and French troops against the Imperial Russian Army

    The Battle of Alma - The Crimean War
    The Battle of Alma part of The Crimean War fought between the British, French, Turkish armies against the Russian army and a prelude to the Battle of Balaclava - the charge of the ...

     

    Crimean War



     
    Copyright © 2008 Hintcenter.com - All rights reserved.
    Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
    All Trademarks belong to their repective owners. Many aspects of this page are used under
    commercial commons license from Yahoo!