IV.

The War

On November 30, 1853, the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet at the Black Sea port of Sinope, leading to public outcry in Britain and France. In March 1854, after Russia ignored their demand to evacuate Moldavia and Walachia, Britain and France declared war believing that their naval supremacy would bring a quick victory. They were later joined by the Italian kingdom of Sardinia which hoped to gain favour with Great Britain and France, and their help in expelling Austria from the smaller Italian kingdoms. On June 3, Austria, to Russia’s dismay, threatened to declare war unless Russia evacuated Moldavia and Walachia. Russia complied on August 5, and Austrian troops occupied the principalities.

The allies then decided on a campaign against Sevastopol in the Crimea, headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and their forces landed in the Crimea in September 1854. Despite bloody victories over the Russians on the River Alma and at the Battles of Balaklava, and Inkerman, the war dragged on, as the Russians refused to accept the allies’ peace terms. Finally, on September 9, 1855, Sevastopol fell, but only after Austria threatened to enter the war did Russia agree to make peace.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on March 30, 1856, was a major setback for Russia’s Middle Eastern policy. Russia was forced to return southern Bessarabia and the mouth of the Danube to the Ottoman Empire; Moldavia, Walachia, and Serbia were placed under an international rather than a Russian guarantee; the sultan limited himself to vague promises to respect the rights of all his Christian subjects; and the Russians were forbidden to maintain a navy on the Black Sea.

In military terms, the war was a blundering, needlessly costly affair. The commanders on both sides proved remarkably inept, squandering lives in senseless engagements such as the famed “Charge of the Light Brigade”, in which a British unit suffered severe losses during the Battle of Balaklava. Supplies of food, clothing, and munitions to both armies were hampered by inefficiency and corruption, and medical services were appalling. The British nurse Florence Nightingale won fame by her efforts to improve the care of the sick and wounded, but more men died of disease than in battle. Public opinion in Great Britain had also become increasingly critical of the war after reading eyewitness accounts in The Times newspaper, sent back by the Irish reporter W. H. Russell, the first journalist to write as a war correspondent using the telegraph.

Nevertheless, the war was an event of major significance in European history. It marked the collapse of the arrangement whereby the victors of the Napoleonic Wars, namely Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, had cooperated to maintain peace in Europe for four decades. The myth of Russian might was laid to rest, and the breakup of the old coalition permitted Germany and Italy to free themselves from Austrian influence and emerge as independent nations in the decade that followed. Finally, the shock of the Crimean defeat was the catalyst for a programme of sweeping internal reform in Russia under Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II.