Crimean War

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CRIMEAN WAR

The Crimean War (1853–1856) was Europe's greatest war between 1815 and 1914, pitting first Turkey, then France and England, and finally Piedmont–Sardinia against Russia.

The incautious and miscalculated decision by Nicholas I to activate his southern army corps and Black Sea fleet in late December 1852 can be attributed to several general misperceptions: the official myth that Russia legally protected the Ottoman Orthodox; disinformative claims of Ottoman perfidy regarding the Orthodox–Catholic dispute over Christian Holy Places; and illusions of Austrian loyalty and British friendship. Attempts to interest the British in a partition of the Ottoman Empire failed. Britain followed France in sending a fleet to the Aegean to back Turkey, after Russia's extraordinary ambassador to Istanbul, Alexander Menshikov, acted peremptorily, following the tsar's instructions, in March 1852. Blaming Turkish obstinacy on the British ambassador Stratford de Redcliffe, the Russians refused to accept the Ottoman compromise proposal on the Holy Places on the grounds that it skirted the protection issue. Russia broke relations with Turkey in May and occupied Moldavia and Wallachia in July.

While the Ottomans mobilized, European statesmen sought an exit. Russia's outright rejection in September of another Ottoman compromise finessing the protection issue, one which the British found reasonable, emboldened the Turks to declare war and attack Russian positions in Wallachia and the eastern Black Sea (October). Admiral Pavel

Nakhimov's Black Sea squadron destroyed a Turkish supply convoy off Sinope (November 30), and the combined Anglo–French–Turkish fleet entered the Black Sea on January 1, 1854. Russia refused the humiliating allied demand to keep to port, and by early April, Britain and France were at war with Russia.

Russia's million–man army was larger than that of the allies, but had fewer rifles and deployed 600,000 troops from Finland to Bessarabia as insurance against attacks from the west. Anglo–French fleets and logistics far outclassed Russia's.

The war operated on several fronts. The Russians crossed the Danube in March and besieged Silistra, only to retreat and evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia in June in the face of Austro–German threats. Anglo–French naval squadrons entered the Baltic and destroyed Russia's fortifications at Bomarsund and Sveaborg, but did not harm Kronstadt. In Transcaucasia, Russian counterattacks and superior tactics led to advances into Eastern Anatolia and the eventual investment of Kars in September 1855.

The key theater was Crimea, where the capture of Sevastopol was the chief Allied goal. Both sides made mistakes. The Russians could have mounted a more energetic defense against Allied landings, while the Allies might have taken Sevastopol before the Russians fortified their defenses with sunken ships and naval ordnance under Admiral Vladimir Kornilov and army engineer Adjutant Eduard Totleben. The Allies landed at Evpatoria, defeated the Russians at the Alma River (September 20, 1854), and redeployed south of Sevastopol. The Russian attempt to drive the Allies from Balaklava failed even before the British Light Brigade made its celebrated, ill–fated charge (October 25, 1854). The well–outnumbered allies then tried to besiege Sevastopol and thus exposed themselves to a counterattack at Inkerman on November 5, 1854, which the Russians completely mishandled with their outmoded tactics, negligible staff work, and command rivalries.

Despite a terrible winter, the Allies reinforced and renewed their siege in February 1855. Allied reoccupation of Evpatoria, where the Turks held off a Russian counterattack, and a summer descent on Kerch disrupted the flow of Russian supplies. The death of Nicholas I and accession of Alexander II (March 2) meant little at first. As per imperial wishes, the Russians mounted a hopeless attack on the besiegers' positions on the Chernaya River (August 16). The constant Allied bombardment and French-led assaults on Sevastopol's outer defenses led to an orderly evacuation (September 8–9). The Russians in turn captured Kars in Eastern Anatolia (November 26), thereby gaining a bargaining chip. Hostilities soon abated.

Russia lost the war in the Baltic, Crimea, and lower Danube, with the demilitarization of the Åland Islands and the Black Sea and retrocession of southern Bessarabia, but, at the cost of 400,000-500,000 casualties, defended the empire's integrity from maximal Anglo–Ottoman rollback goals and won the war in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. The evidence of Russia's technological and structural inferiority to the West, as well as the massive turnout of peasant serfs expecting emancipation in return for volunteer service, were major catalysts of the Great Reforms under Alexander II. Russia became more like the other great powers, adhering to the demands of cynical self-interest.

See also: great britain, relations with; military, imperial era; nesselrode, karl robert; sevastopol; turkey, relations with