The Crimean War (October 1853 –
February 1856), also known in Russian historiography as the Eastern War
of 1853–1856 , was a conflict in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
The French promoted the rights of Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern
Orthodox Christians.
The longer-term causes involved the decline of
the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of the United Kingdom and France to allow
Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense. It has widely been noted
that the causes, in one case involving an argument over a key, have never
revealed a "greater confusion of purpose", yet led to a war noted for
its "notoriously incompetent international butchery.
While the churches eventually worked out their
differences and came to an initial agreement, both Nicholas I of Russia and Napoleon III refused to back down. Nicholas issued an
ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Empire be placed under his
protection.
Britain attempted to mediate, and arranged a compromise that
Nicholas agreed to. When the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas refused and
prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain,
the Ottomans officially declared war on Russia in October 1853.
The war opened in the Balkans when Russian troops occupied provinces in
modern Romania and began to cross the Danube. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive battle
and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the fort town of Kars in eastern Turkey led to a siege, and a Turkish attempt to reinforce
the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at Sinop. Fearing an Ottoman collapse, France and the UK
rushed forces to Gallipoli. Then moved north to Varna in June, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra.
Aside from a minor skirmish at Constanța there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped that "there they are, the
French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible".
Frustrated by the wasted effort, and with
demands for action from their citizens, the allied force decided to attack the
center of Russian strength in the Black Sea at Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula. After extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in
September 1854 and fought their way to a point south of Sevastopol after a
series of successful battles. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in
what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but at the cost of
seriously depleting the British Army forces. A second counterattack, ordered
personally by Nicholas, was defeated by Omar Pasha. The front settled into a
siege and led to horrible conditions for everyone involved. Smaller actions
were carried out in the Baltic, the Caucasus, the White Sea and in the North Pacific.
Sevastopol fell after eleven months, and
formerly neutral countries began to join the allied cause. Isolated and facing
a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued, Russia sued
for peace in March 1856. This was welcomed by France and the UK, where the
citizens began to turn against their governments as the war dragged on. The war
was officially ended by the Treaty of
Paris, signed
on 30 March 1856. Russia lost the war, and was forbidden from hosting warships
in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became
largely independent. Christians were granted a degree of official equality, and
the Orthodox church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.
The war had a permanent impact. Through nationalist movements incited by the war, the
present-day states ofUkraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and regions such as Crimea and the Caucasus
all changed in small or large ways due to this conflict. It also helped set the
backbone of several geopolitical conflicts between the Western world and Russia and other Eastern world powers, which would include the Cold War in the 20th century.
The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts
to use modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways, and telegraphs. The war was one of the first to be
documented extensively in written reports andphotographs. As the legend of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" demonstrates, the war quickly became an
iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement.
The reaction in the UK was a demand for professionalization, most famously
achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering
modern nursing while treating the wounded.
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