Crimean War (1853-1856): Britain, France and Russia at War

The Crimean War (1853-1856) was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, Britain, France and later Piedmont-Sardinia. It grew out of a quarrel over Christian holy places and Russian ambitions towards the Ottoman lands, and its main campaign was the siege of the Russian naval base of Sevastopol in Crimea. Fought with a mix of old and new technology, it killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, mostly through disease, and reshaped European politics.

Background: the Eastern Question

By the mid-19th century the Ottoman Empire was widely seen as declining, and the great powers argued over what would happen to its territory. This problem was known as the “Eastern Question”. Russia hoped to extend its influence in the Balkans and over the Bosporus and Dardanelles, the straits linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Britain feared any Russian advance towards the Mediterranean and its routes to India. France under Napoleon III wanted to restore its prestige and undo the settlement that had followed his uncle’s defeat in 1815.

The spark was religious. In 1852 the Ottoman Sultan, under French pressure, gave Catholic clergy rights at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that the Orthodox Church had long claimed. Tsar Nicholas I saw himself as the protector of the Sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects and regarded this as an insult.

The road to war

In early 1853 Nicholas sent Prince Alexander Menshikov to Constantinople to demand a formal Russian protectorate over Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, encouraged by the British ambassador, refused. In July 1853 Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, in today’s Romania.

Diplomatic efforts, including the so-called Vienna Note, failed. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia in October 1853 and fighting began on the Danube and in the Caucasus.

On 30 November 1853 a Russian squadron under Admiral Pavel Nakhimov destroyed an Ottoman flotilla at Sinope on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia. The British press called it a “massacre”, and public opinion in Britain turned sharply against Russia. Britain and France sent their fleets into the Black Sea and declared war on Russia at the end of March 1854.

Allied troops gathered at Varna in Bulgaria, where cholera struck them hard before any fighting. Meanwhile the Russian siege of the fortress of Silistra on the Danube failed in June 1854. Under pressure from Austria, whose troops then occupied the principalities, Russia withdrew across the river.

With the original reason for war gone, Britain and France decided to strike at Russia’s main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. Destroying it would remove the Russian fleet’s threat to Constantinople. The expedition was planned in haste, with little knowledge of the peninsula, its defences or its harsh winter climate, and the allied commanders, Lord Raglan and Marshal Armand de Saint-Arnaud, expected a short campaign. Saint-Arnaud, already seriously ill, died at sea in late September 1854 and was succeeded by General François Canrobert.

The Crimean campaign

Some 60,000 British, French and Ottoman troops landed at Kalamita Bay, north of Sevastopol, in mid-September 1854. On 20 September they defeated Menshikov’s army at the River Alma. The allies then marched round the city to set up bases at Balaclava and Kamiesch on the southern side.

Rather than storm Sevastopol at once, the allies began a siege. The Russians scuttled ships across the harbour mouth and, guided by the engineer Eduard Totleben, built strong earthworks. The Siege of Sevastopol lasted almost a year.

The Russians tried twice to break the allied hold. At Balaclava on 25 October 1854 they were repulsed, although a misunderstood order led to the Charge of the Light Brigade. At Inkerman on 5 November a larger Russian attack, fought in heavy fog, was beaten off with heavy losses on both sides.

The terrible winter

The winter of 1854-1855 was the war’s darkest period for the British army. A storm on 14 November 1854 sank supply ships, and the single road from Balaclava turned to mud. Soldiers lacked fuel, warm clothing and food, and thousands died from cold, cholera, dysentery and scurvy.

Reports by the Times correspondent William Howard Russell caused outrage at home. The government of Lord Aberdeen fell in January 1855 and Lord Palmerston became prime minister. Florence Nightingale and her nurses had reached the base hospital at Scutari, across the Bosporus from Constantinople, in November 1854.

The fall of Sevastopol and other theatres

In 1855 the balance shifted. Piedmont-Sardinia joined the allies in January and sent around 15,000 troops. A railway was built from Balaclava to the siege lines. Tsar Nicholas I died on 2 March 1855 and was succeeded by Alexander II. Lord Raglan, the British commander, died of illness in June, after a failed allied assault on the Malakoff and Redan forts.

On 16 August 1855 a Russian relief attack was defeated at the Chernaya River. On 8 September French troops under General Patrice de MacMahon captured the Malakoff, the key to the defences, while a British assault on the Redan failed. The Russians blew up their remaining forts and ships and abandoned the southern side of Sevastopol that night.

The war was not confined to Crimea. In the Baltic, allied fleets captured the fortress of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands in August 1854 and bombarded Sveaborg near Helsinki in August 1855. There were smaller actions in the White Sea and at Petropavlovsk on the Pacific coast.

In the Caucasus, Ottoman and Russian armies fought throughout the war. The Russians besieged the Ottoman fortress of Kars, defended with British help, and starved it into surrender in November 1855. This gave Russia a bargaining counter at the peace talks.

Peace, consequences and legacy

Facing an Austrian ultimatum and exhausted by the war, Russia agreed to negotiate. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, neutralised the Black Sea, banning warships and naval arsenals there. Russia gave up southern Bessarabia, the Danubian Principalities were placed under the joint guarantee of the powers, and the Ottoman Empire was formally admitted to the European system of great powers.

The war weakened the “Concert of Europe” and especially the conservative partnership of Russia and Austria. That opened the way for the unification of Italy and Germany over the next 15 years. Piedmont’s participation earned it a seat at the peace congress and support for the Italian cause.

In Russia, defeat exposed the backwardness of the army and economy. Alexander II launched the Great Reforms, including the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Russia repudiated the Black Sea clauses in 1870, taking advantage of France’s defeat by Prussia.

For the Ottoman Empire, victory came at a price. To meet its war costs it took its first foreign loans in 1854, beginning a cycle of debt that ended in bankruptcy in 1875. In 1856 the Sultan also issued a major reform edict, the Hatt-i Humayun, promising legal equality to his non-Muslim subjects.

The Crimean War is often called the first modern media war. The electric telegraph carried news quickly to London and Paris, newspaper correspondents reported freely from the front, and Roger Fenton and others photographed the camps and battlefields.

It also changed medicine and nursing. The work of Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Russian nurses such as the Sisters of Mercy who worked under the surgeon Nikolai Pirogov drew attention to hospital conditions. In Britain, the Victoria Cross was created in 1856 to reward bravery during the war.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: the war was mainly about Crimea. Crimea became the main theatre only because the allies chose to attack Sevastopol. The causes lay in the Balkans, the Straits and the holy places of Palestine.

Myth: battle caused most deaths. In fact disease killed far more soldiers than enemy fire on every side. Cholera, dysentery and typhus were the main killers.

Myth: Britain led the allied war effort. France provided the largest allied army in Crimea and carried the decisive assault on the Malakoff in 1855.

Timeline

• 1853, July: Russian troops occupy Moldavia and Wallachia.
• 1853, October: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
• 1853, 30 November: Russia destroys an Ottoman squadron at Sinope.
• 1854, 27-28 March: France and Britain declare war on Russia.
• 1854, 20 September: The allies win the Battle of the Alma.
• 1854, 25 October: Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
• 1854, 5 November: Battle of Inkerman.
• 1855, 2 March: Tsar Nicholas I dies; Alexander II succeeds him.
• 1855, 8-9 September: The French take the Malakoff and the Russians abandon southern Sevastopol.
• 1856, 30 March: The Treaty of Paris ends the war.

Why it matters

The Crimean War ended the long peace that followed the Napoleonic Wars and loosened the ties between the great powers, making the wars of Italian and German unification possible. It pushed Russia into major reforms and transformed public expectations of how armies should treat their soldiers.