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Crimean War
| Crimean War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Ottoman wars in Europe and the Russo-Turkish Wars | |||||||||
 Attack on the Malakoff, by William Simpson | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Ottoman Empire France[a] United Kingdom[a] Sardinia[b] |
 Russia Greece[c] | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
Total: 673,900 235,568[1] 309,268[2] 97,864[2] 21,000[2] |
Total: 889,000[2]–1,774,872[3] 888,000 mobilised 324,478 deployed | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
|
Total: 165,363 dead
|
Total: 450,015 dead[5][2][6] 73,125 combat deaths 376,890 non-combat deaths (Clodfelter and others) Total: 522,000 dead[4] (Tashlykov) Total: 73,125 dead[7] 35,671 combat deaths 37,454 non-combat deaths (Dumas & Vedel-Petersen) 40,551 combat deaths 81,247 wounded[8] (Russian medical Directorate) | ||||||||
| Casualties include death by disease. In all cases, death by disease exceeded the sum of "killed in action" or "died of wounds". | |||||||||
The Crimean War[d] was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom, and Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856.[9] Geopolitical causes of the war included the decline of the Ottoman Empire (the "Eastern Question"), the expansion of Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish Wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.
The flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine.[10] After the Sublime Porte refused Russian tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October[11] and halted the Russian advance at Silistria. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854.[9]
In September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed on the Crimean Peninsula in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol, and scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the eleven-month-long Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853–1855), the White Sea (July–August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854–1855). The Italian Kingdom of Sardinia entered on the side of the allies in 1855.
Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed the development, owing to the conflict's domestic unpopularity. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.[12]
The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs.[13] It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly became a symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and of mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalisation of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded. The Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined its influence in Europe. The humiliating defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems, and became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the abolition of serfdom and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Badem 2010, p. 280.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Clodfelter 2017, p. 180.
- ^ Brooks, E. Willis (1984). "Reform in the Russian Army, 1856-1861". Slavic Review. 43 (1): 63–82. doi:10.2307/2498735. JSTOR 2498735.
- ^ a b Tashlykov, Sergei (2023). Крымская война [The Crimean War]. Great Russian Encyclopedia (in Russian).
- ^ Figes 2010, p. 489.
- ^ Mara Kozelsky, "The Crimean War, 1853–56." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13.4 (2012): 903–917 online.
- ^ Dumas & Vedel-Petersen 1923, p. 42.
- ^ Kozlovsky N. Vojna s Japoniey 1904-1905, 1914. Main Military Medical Directorate, p. 248
- ^ a b "Crimean War". Encyclopedia Britannica. 27 September 2020. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
- ^ "The Crimean War". historytoday.com. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
- ^ Kerr, Paul (2000). The Crimean War. Mcmillan. p. 17. ISBN 978-0752272481.
- ^ Figes 2010, p. 415.
- ^ Royle 2000, Preface.
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