Definition of Crimean War

Topical again since the hybrid war episode that ended with its annexation to Russia in March 2014, Crimea has had a long history of territory in dispute, thanks to its strategic location. One of these episodes would even give rise to a poem epic of the great British poet Alfred Tennyson.

The Crimean War was a warlike conflict fought between October 1853 and March 1856 by a coalition led by Great Britain, the Second French Empire, and the Ottoman Empire on the one hand, and the Russian Empire on the one hand the other.

Saying conflict is part of the call Great game, a showdown (sometime bloody, as is the case, but most of the time strategic) between the British and Russian empires, for control of the Caucasus and parts of Asia as Afghanistan.

The intervention both Great Britain and France were done to avoid a total defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which would have left Russia's hands free in the Caucasus.

The war had started in 1853 on two fronts: the Caucasus and the area of ​​the Danube delta. Great Britain and France feared an intervention by the Austrian Empire in favor of Russia to take advantage of the occasion and prey on the European territories of the Ottoman Empire. Russia also feared Austrian intervention in the reverse direction, in support of the Ottomans.

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A Russian victory in the war would have tipped the balance of power and global dominance contested between the British and the Russians in favor of the latter, so the British and the Gauls (a those who were not very amused by the Russian potential, with the memory of the Napoleonic Wars) decided to intervene.

In addition, for France, Napoleon III wanted to restore the grandeur lost after defeat in the Napoleonic Wars.

The choice of an attack on Crimea responded to the fact that the Russian Black Sea fleet had its operational base in Sevastopol.

The fall of Crimea would derail any Russian attempt to directly attack Anatolia by landing, forcing them to fight on the ground in a war of attrition.

The allies expected a blitzkrieg campaign and an easy victory, but they ran into a very real reality. different, with a Russian army that put the desire and had means (especially human), provoking with it a endurance acrimonious and a long and bloody campaign.

In several respects, Crimea was the precedent for what would later become World War I, a conflict that was bogged down in a trench warfare of positions, and a bad life for the soldiers in the front.

The concern of most of the commanders for the welfare of their men was also conspicuous by its absence, and the logistics was organized almost as in the Napoleonic wars for armies that, with new weapons, techniques, tactics, and a higher velocity, demanded a new way of working to get the supplies.

To sum up, we could say that the armies were not up to their soldiers.

A pretext for war was the religious one, specifically the conflict between the Orthodox Christian churches on the one hand, versus the Catholic and Protestant on the other.

The issue in this case was the protection of Christian communities on Ottoman soil, as well as the protection of holy places, such as Jerusalem.

The "casus belli" to break the hostilities was the destruction of the Ottoman fleet anchored in Sinope by the Russian fleet of the Black Sea.

With this fleet, the Ottomans supplied the forces of the Caucasus territories that resisted the attempts of annexation by the Russian Empire, with the support of the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, the presence of these Ottoman ships in Sinope was a clear provocation towards the Russian Empire, in addition to forcing the Allied intervention; without a fleet, the Ottoman Empire was extremely vulnerable to Russian attacks, which was of no interest to Britain and France for the reasons explained above.

On January 3, 1854, a joint Anglo-French squad entered the Black Sea with the aim of protecting the remains of the Ottoman fleet and its ports.

Meanwhile, the Russians were defeating the Ottomans on the Danubian and Caucasian fronts, although they did not lack the determination to exploit these victories.

Austria finally intervened in the Balkans against the Russians, but also to prevent the Ottomans from keeping those territories that the Russians evacuated, while a force Anglo-British expeditionary was attempting a landing - unsuccessful - in the Russian Far East, specifically on the Kamchatka Peninsula. They even deployed operations in the Baltic.

Finally, they decided to strike with their expeditionary force at the point on which the Russian offensive was swinging: Crimea and, more specifically, the base of Sevastopol.

The siege of this city began on September 19, 1854, and on October 25 of the same year it took place, in the Battle of Balaclava, a fact that has gone down in history, with an epic poem and an epic film included: the charge of the Brigade Light

This epic passage, the result of a series of errors in the chain of command, led the light cavalry brigade to charge against the Russian artillery through a valley one and a half kilometers long, flanked by Russian defenses. In short: a real slaughterhouse.

The battle of Balaclava, together with the previous one on the Almá river and the later one on Inkerman, are the most famous names of the war. In these skirmishes, the Allies overcame the Russians, but not decisively, so that the latter were able to hold Sevastopol until their fall on September 9, 1855.

In January 1855 the Kingdom of Sardinia joined the allied side, thus seeking to contribute with international recognition to the unifying process of Italy.

Before the fall of Sevastopol, the Russian commanders tried one last movement to liberate the city, which took place in the battle of the Chiórnaya River, which ended in a new defeat for the Tsar's subjects.

Although Alexander II tried to continue the war, the situation in the different scenarios made him reconsider his opinion and open a line of negotiation with the allies, which would crystallize in the Treaty of 1856 Paris

This decision contributed to the fact that Sweden went to war with Russia in November 1855, which made it difficult for the Russian defense on the Baltic front.

The winners of the Treaty of Paris (at least in the short term) were the British, French and Ottomans, and The losers were the Russians, with the Austrians benefiting from some measures and harmed by other

Photos: Fotolia - Archivist

Crimean War Issues