The Crimean War
Flying Pig
Between 1853 and 1856, an unlikely alliance of the British Empire, the small Kingdom of Sardinia and France with the Ottoman Empire was locked in war against the mighty nation of Russia, one of the last absolute monarchies in Europe. This war was to see a great deal of blood, shows of incompetence and inspiring examples of heroism. It has been considered the first modern war, since the war changed the almost medieval European conception of military strategy into something more recognisable as modern-day conflict.
The Ottoman Empire was the descendant of the great Arab Empire of around the turn of the first millennium and had once been the greatest power in the world, but by the nineteenth century was well into decline and but a mere shade of its former glory. In 1853 the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas I, saw a chance to take advantage of its imminent (he believed) topple and seize its land, including Turkey itself, and expand Russian influence into the Mediterranean. Although they were old enemies, indeed it was the British Empire which had sullied the pride of Napoleon himself less that half a century earlier, Britain and France both had a vested interest in keeping the Tsar out of that area and so they both sent fleets to assist the Turks, under the British Lord Raglan and the French Marshal Saint Arnaud.
The Road to War
The reasons for the war can ultimately be traced back to the various nations of Europe attempting to take the territory of the ancient Ottoman Empire as it collapsed. Upon the military coup of 1851 in France, the Emperor ordered his ambassador to Istanbul to force the Ottomans to give sovereign authority over the Holy Land to France. The Russians, who had at least two treaties giving them the status of sole protector of [orthodox] Christians in the Empire (which required that they have the keys to the Church of the Nativity), protested against the Ottoman move, and so the Sultan decided to renounce his treaty with the French and uphold his Russian ties.
The French were not pleased with this, and so unsubtly sent the ship-of-the-line Charlemagne to the Black Sea, which was barred to all non-Ottoman warships by the London Straights Convention. The Sultan took the hint, and so gave control of the Holy Land (and, importantly, the keys) to France and the Roman Catholic Church.
If the French had been angry, the Tsar was furious. He deployed two army corps, the IV and V, to the Danube (which was at that time the border between the Turks and the Russians) in a show of his anger; as he saw that the Greek Orthodox Church had been the victim of a great deal of injustice over the years. At the same time, he made his diplomatic preparations; saying to the British that he did not seek to expand Imperial Russia and advising the Ottomans via his diplomat Prince Menshikov to accept a new treaty, which said that Russia would be allowed to intervene inside the empire to defend Christian holy places and that a religious council be set up so that the Russians could in effect manipulate the ranks of the Orthodox Church in the Empire. In addition, Menshikov started to ask the Sultan to replace senior public servants; at which the French sent a naval task force to support the Ottomans.
The Sultan, who had been advised by the British that the treaty compromised Ottoman independence, rejected Menshikovs demands. This caused the Tsar on 2 July 1853 to move soldiers into Moldova and Wallachia, which were officially owned by Istanbul but the Russians were responsible for protecting the Christians there, on the grounds that the Ottomans had shown their inability to protect Christians by their Holy Land diplomacy. At this, the British sent a fleet to the Dardanelles to join up with a pre-existing French fleet, but at this stage it was only there to assist in negotiations. These failed to such an extent that on 23 October the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, probably feeling confident that it had powerful allies.
The Last Straw
The final chance for peace was shattered by the Battle of Sinop. The Ottomans had been moving into the now-occupied Danube region, which the Tsar decided to counter by sinking the Ottoman fleet. Sea battles had been raging for weeks and the Turks were often sending out patrol squadrons into the Black Sea (which was still Ottoman-only by treaty).
One of these patrols, which was under the command of Osman Pasha, found itself at Sinope, where it was re-enforced by a steam-powered frigate (the Taif) which came in from a smaller squadron and the Kaid Zafer which had already served in an earlier patrol. These vessels, at the advice of the British ambassador to Istanbul, were all frigates.
The Russians, sailing in two lines of battleships, came into the Turkish harbour and spent about an hour firing on the ships at anchor and tearing apart coastal batteries there. Only one ship escaped, the steam-ship Taif, which came back to Istanbul on 2 December after escaping Russian steamers.
The battle is generally held to be the last major skirmish of the age of sail, as it showed the massive inferiority of sail-powered vessels against steam ships. It provided the British and French, presumably on the grounds of the London Straights Convention, a case to declare war on Russia, which they did on 28 March 1854 after the Russians rejected their final demands to retreat from the Danube.
Battle in the Pacific Petropavlovsk
The Siege of Petropavlovsk was the largest action of the war which took place in the Pacific Ocean, as opposed to in the Black Sea area.
On 18 August 1854, the Allies sent a squadron to Avacha Bay, which was vastly larger than the Russian forces there. In response to seeing them, the Russians sent their largest vessel, the Pallada, up the river Amur and sent the rest of the ships to the harbour of Petropavlovsk, where they took shelter from the allied fleet under the protection of cannons on the shore.
On 30 August 1854, the allies came up to open fire on the city, with about 218 guns against the 67 defending the city. They withdrew when one of their commanders committed suicide, but came back and resumed fire the next day.
Seeing as the city was only lightly defended, with just over 1,000 men either on the ships or in the city, the Allies came back twice, first on 24 August; where they landed nearly 1000 men, who were defeated by 360 Russian soldiers, and again on 4 September with about 700 men to attack. Unfortunately for them, the Russians ambushed them and, after a loss of 208, they pulled out.
The Allies did not come back, and so stayed outside the city until April 1855, where the Russian commander, expecting another attack, decided that he did not have enough men and so took all of his forces away. The battle ended operations in that area, or at least meant that the Allies did not seriously try to make a war-winning attack there.
Entering the Crimea the River Alma
The allies landed on 13 September 1854, on the west of the Crimean Peninsula, about 35 miles north of the vital city of Sevastopol. They were, since the Russians were unable to meet them in battle, able to make a beachhead four miles inland and then turn south, over two rivers. The second of these was the Alma, and there the Russians decided to stand, fight, and throw the invaders back into the sea. The allies, since all that the Russians needed to do to win was hold their beautiful defensive position, decided to position the French on the right of the line. They would then attack up the cliffs and over the river, which would distract the Russians from a British assault on the rest of the line.
The First Assault
The French troops on the right of the line managed to cross the river and clear the cliffs of the enemy, but could not carry on the attack without support; however the men on his left who were meant to be his support, under Prince Napoleon, got over the river but couldnt get their artillery up the cliffs. The troops were coming under heavy fire, and so they took shelter in nearby vineyards.
The British were pushing forwards in two lines; the first had the Light Division on the left and the second division on the right and the second had the third division on the left, while the 1st division was on the right. The British also had the 4th Division and the cavalry, under Lord Lucan, in reserve. A problem came about when the Light Division did not extend far enough, meaning that it advanced at a slight angle, and the commander failed to notice this meaning that before long men of the lights were merging with those of the second, making the disciplined formation turn into a mob.
The British officers could not sort the line out again, and so gave the order to charge the enemy as they were. The British were attacking up a slope, and when the enemy came over the hill in a huge mass they stopped and opened fire, and due to the vastly superior British skill in rifle duels the Russians were pushed back, and due to the slightly scattered nature of the British attack the Russian guns had little real impact. They got to the enemy redoubt as they were moving their guns, but while they were there they could see that re-enforcements were not coming; for the first division was still at the river and the Russians had a massive column ready to attack.
Retreat and Reform
As the British made ready to defend the redoubt against the Russians, one of their officers shouted Do not fire! They are French! while others were ordering that fire be opened, and so in the chaos the troops fell back. The Russians attempted to pursue, but found to their horror that Lord Raglan and his staff had moved up to a spur of the ridge to get a better view and installed guns, which not only forced the Russians to remove their guns from the valley but fired on the troops attacking the fleeing British, convincing them to stop the pursuit.
The First Division was now over the river and so their line had the Grenadier Guards on the right, the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the centre and the Coldstream Guards on the left. Under fire from the Fusiliers, the Russians sent over hundreds of soldiers firing down, which caused so much panic that the fleeing Fusiliers broke the line of the Scots Guards on many counts, and they were then shattered when they stopped forty yards from the enemy in the face of a bayonet charge; making them run away, only stopping when they reached the river, at a cost of 200.
Because of this, there was a large gap between the two guards units on the flanks of the line, into which the Russians sent two battalions. As they were preparing to take the charge, the Grenadiers were told to retreat, but the commander of the left-wing company told his men to position themselves in front of the next company, so the battalion formed a large L shape; so as the Russians came into it they fired accurate, close-range bullets into the enemy flank. This made the Russians pause for just long enough to make the British advance, pushing them back and taking the redoubt again, smashing the left of the Russians army in the process.
The Highlanders Prove their Worth
While the 1st Division had been advancing, the Highland Brigade had been out of Russian sight on the far left. Their three battalions, under Sir Colin Campbell, attacked 10,000 Russian troops in a two-thousand yards long line of two ranks. The Russians could not see that it was so thin due to the smoke, and they advanced on the enemy with guns firing, which in those days was an incredibly difficult manoeuvre. The Russians fell back, and the French finally got up the cliffs with their guns and seized the whole area near where Raglan was using Zouaves (North African troops). The route to Sevastopol was open, but the French did not want to pursue the enemy and Raglan did not want to go it alone, and so Menshikovs army escaped losing nearly six-thousand.
The Siege of Sevastopol
The main allied objective for the campaign was the Crimean naval base of Sevastopol; through which the Tsar controlled the Black Sea and threatened the Ottoman capital at Istanbul (Constantinople). This campaign was the main focus of the war the allied army knew that when the city fell the Russians would no longer pose a threat to either their or their allies interests in the Black and Mediterranean seas.
The allies encircled it in September and by early October were moving engineers up from their base at Balaklava to build siege lines against the city, which was protected by 35,000 men. Due to a lack of cannons and fears for their safety at sea, the Russians scuttled their ships and took cannons from them to use in the defence. By mid-October, there were 120 allied guns facing 360 Russian pieces, which opened fire on 29 October. In this engagement Russian shells at the Malakoff redoubt were set off, creating a gap in the defences, but the allies did not follow this up with an infantry attack and so they missed their chance to end the siege. For most of the rest of the siege, allied ships fired on the defences by day and the Russians repaired the defences by night, until the Russian army re-appeared to try and end the siege.
The Battle of Balaklava
Prelude to Battle
Prince Menshikov, in an attempt to break the blockade at Sevastopol, lead his army (still mostly intact from defeat at the Alma) to attack the main supply base of the allied army which was at Balaklava and defended by the British under the command of Sir Colin Campbell. He decided to come in from the east, try to catch the British unawares, storm the British redoubts on the heights coming in, and then take the camp while it was almost undefended, forcing the allies to pull away from the city due to lack of supplies.
Now, the plain of Balaklava has a ridge at one end and a spine-like ridge running down the middle, and to reach the British camp the Russians first had to cross the river Tchernaya and some hills, then go up the hills to capture positions on the spine (called the Causeway Heights) before attacking the British, camped with their backs to the settlement of Balaklava and the sea. At the northern foot of the heights were camped the British cavalry under the command of Lords Lucan and Cardigan.
Battle Commences
The Russian army was sighted first at the most easterly British position, which is called Kamara, just before 0500 hours by the commander there; Captain Alexander Low, 4th Dragoons. He had his men (some sources say he woke them up) and ordered that they withdraw to the nearest position on the Causeway Heights.
They went to No. 1 redoubt on a high point in those heights, Canroberts Hill, which was the location of the real start to the battle when at about 0600 hours cannon fired from there caught the attention of Lord Lucan, who sent off a captain to the HQ to tell Lord Raglan that the redoubts were under attack. When he arrived at 0700 hours, those at the HQ positions at Kadikoi had already been alerted by the sound of cannon, and so Lucan himself went to Kadikoi to speak with the overall commander, Sir Colin Cambell, who decided that he would personally make ready the 93rd Highland Regiment for action while Lucan returned to the cavalry. When he returned he led one of his brigades, the Heavy, to the redoubts to discourage the Russian attack, but seeing that he could do nothing to prevent them he decided to bring the brigade back to the main cavalry position along with the Light Brigade, leaving his Turkish allies in the redoubts alone against the enemy. They failed miserably; but 0800 hours the Russians had taken the first four redoubts, of which they razed No.4.
The Thin Red Line
When the Russian cavalry had stormed over the British redoubts on the Causeway Heights, they came down into the valley in a bid to take the almost-defenceless British camps. The first, aimed directly at Kadikoi, found only Campbell and the 93rd Highland in their way. Telling them that there could be no retreat and they must die where they stand (to which one of his men replied aye, sir, and needs be well do that), Sir Colin formed them into a double rank and ordered them to open up on the charging horsemen.
Normally, an infantry unit facing such a charge would have formed a square with the front rank using their bayonets in a formation designed to stop cavalry, but maybe through lack of time or possibly due to his low opinion of the enemy Campbell did not even make four ranks, which would have been the custom for a line against horsemen. They fired three times; first at long range which is not said to have inflicted any damage, then secondly supported by the guns of Royal Marines stationed on a hill to their right which caused the Russians to swerve left; meaning that Campbell threw in the right grenadier company which delivered another.
According to many sources, the Russians turned at this point because they thought that there was no way that Campbell would be heroic enough to protect the camp with just his double-rank and so they must have been riding into a trap. After that action, some of the men attempted to charge in pursuit but Campbell, who had himself been keeping in check his will to order that, commanded them to damn all that eagerness!
Scarletts Charge
While some of the Russians were being broken on the Scottish rock, another part of their cavalry had been stationary near No.5 redoubt. The Heavy Brigade under General Scarlett spotted them and sent their 300 men against them. They formed into two lines, the famous order from the poem left wheel into line, and moved uphill at reasonably low speed (less than a charge in all likelihood) against 2000 Russian cavalry.
Although this may have looked suicidal, Campbells assessment of the Russians had proven accurate and the Heavy Brigade (which was built for such actions; the horses and men were stronger and heavier than normal and so it was used to breaking strong positions) shattered the enemy, breaking them and killing at least their own number for less than ten dead. Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote his less-famous poem about this action the Charge of the Heavy Brigade. After the Russians fled, the Light Brigade (under the Earl of Cardigan, famous for his strict interpretation of orders) wanted to pursue and finish them off but were told that Lord Raglans orders told them to hold, and that was what they would do.
Death and Glory - The Charge of the Light Brigade
Raglan now wanted the follow up the glorious action of Scarletts men, but was lacking two infantry divisions which had not arrived. However, he thought that the enemy had been sufficiently close to routed by the Heavy Brigade that a show of force by his cavalry would be enough to smash the enemy from the field or definitely the Heights, and so when at 1000 hours Raglan saw the enemy taking the cannons that they had captured (many of which the British had spiked) he gave this order: Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.
Raglan at that time was on a ridge to the west of the field, looking onto the Causeway Heights with a clear view of events there; while Lucan and his brigade were in the valley in the shadow of the heights, from where they could not see the enemy operations there. When Lord Lucan queried which guns the order referred to, the galloper sent with the order, Captain Nolan gestured vaguely in the direction of the heights and said There, my lord, is your enemy and there are your guns! At this, Lucan decided that Raglan had meant a mighty Russian position at the end of the valley in which the Light Brigade was, and so (despite men among the Brigade voicing their concerns that Raglan could not possibly have intended six-hundred light cavalry to attack such a position) he gave Forward, the Light Brigade! and the men of the Brigade (numbering about 660, including Captain Nolan) charged into the valley without a moments hesitation, despite Nolans attempts to ride up alongside the commander, Lord Cardigan, for which he was blown to pieces by a Russian shell.
The valley which they were attacking was not, as Raglan had intended, a small force of Russians moving the cannons but Prince Menshikovs entire army on the sides of the valley were almost fifty cannons and nineteen battalions of infantry, while at the end there were eight more guns protected by four entire Russian regiments. The Russians hesitated to fire the guns at the end of the valley, believing that the Brigade would either be torn to shreds or turn back before they reached them, and so the Cossacks guarding them panicked into flight, whereupon the rest of the gun-guards were killed by the charging soldiers. Since they had no support, they could not hold the guns and so turned back, with the enemy firing at them from the guns as they rode and even firing canister- and grape-shot into the melee where the Light Brigade was trying to hack a path through the Russians. The Heavy Brigade refused to intervene, preferring to give cover to the survivors when they returned, but the French Chasseurs dAfrique came up the enemy-held ridge (called the Fedioukine Hills) and attacked the Russians there, providing the retreating Lights with some cover.
This was probably the most heroic action ever undertaken by a British unit in history. Out of the 661 men who had entered the valley, in twenty minutes 195 were at the other end. The Victoria Cross (at that time a new award) was given out six times; the cavalry knew that the attack was hopeless because, in the words of Lord Lucan, they had no choice but to obey.
After this, the allies were basically incapable of fighting any longer; the hope of re-taking the redoubts had gone and so to attack the Heights and take them back would have wasted valuable men who were, after all, supposed to be part of the siege at Sevastopol. Therefore, the allies pulled back to make sure that they could defend the camp; leaving the Russians in control of the Causeway Heights. Although the Russians trumpeted that they had taken the redoubts and so won a glorious victory, the heroism of the British army had stopped them from their objective and so kept the siege alive; so Menshikov had been thwarted in his plan to break the siege.
The Battle of Inkerman
After their failure at Balaklava, the Russians were still determined to break the siege of Sevastopol. They tried again at the right flank, making a small reconnaissance attack there and then on 5 November a full-scale assault designed, as with Balaklava, to break the British and cut off supplies to the Sevastopol lines forcing the allies to withdraw. Menshikov planned to bring two armies in to attack the Inkerman Ridge, which was only lightly defended, and occupy the Chersonese Plateau to the rear of the enemy while the French were kept busy with auxiliary attacks. He entrusted execution of this plan to General Dannenberg, who was in command of the Danubian soldiers.
The First Wave Comes
Very early in the morning, under the cover of darkness, one force of 19,000 infantrymen and their artillery moved from Sevastopol into the right of the British line under the command of General Soimonov while a second, under the nominal command of General Pavlov and accompanied by Dannenberg, numbering 16,000 attacked over the river Tchernaya came in to support them. However, Inkerman bridge was being repaired, and this combined with Dannenbergs changes to Menshikovs plans meant that the two armies could not attack together but went in after each other.
Despite their total advantage of surprise, the Russian attack was stalled by the heroic conduct of the three thousand men of the 2nd Division under Brigadier-General Pennefather which, rather than pulling back to the plateau to consolidate threw any men available into the fight, which stopped the Russian mass of men and guns having a full effect. The battle was fierce and close-range; the Coldstream Guards made eleven charges with the bayonet, but it broke the enemy attack and managed to kill the Russian commander.
The Second Wave
Thanks to the stern defence put up by the second, the line at the ridge was still standing when the second wave, under General Pavlov and with Dannenberg, arrived for battle. Lord Raglan, who was in overall command, pursued a generally distant policy but did request first that the French gave him help (they had refused earlier) and also that two eighteen-pounder guns counter the enemy artillery.
The French had much larger forces than the British but had been under attack when Raglan first asked their assistance; from a sally coming out of the town on the left of the line and then one hitting south of the plateau numbering 22,000. This attack was weak, which convinced the French to send several regiments in support of Raglan, who arrived just in time as a gap was developing in the British line and the situation was only rescued by the French intervention and the work of the heavy guns to silence the enemy artillery, After taking a great number of losses, the Russians pulled out.
The Aftermath
The Russians, despite getting an ambush on the enemy and having vastly greater resources, had failed to dislodge the allied siege. As before at Balaklava, they had failed to defeat the enemy and so the siege continued as before
The Storm of Eupatoria
In February 1855, the Turks were moving their men away from the Danube border and into the rapidly-fortifying Crimean port of Eupatoria. The Tsar was afraid that this meant that the Turks were preparing for a massive assault, and so he got together a force of 30,000 men to take it on 17 February.
However, the Turks had anticipated the attack and countered with massive firepower from cannons and troops; the Russians retreated after losing 750 men, which turned into an outright rout when the Turks chased them from the field with infantry and horsemen. The victory here meant that the Russians dared not commit large resources to the Crimea for fear that the enemy would cut off the peninsula and flank them, which meant that they were on the back foot for the rest of the war.