Crimean War

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The Crimean War was the military clash fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. The immediate name of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine then element of the Ottoman Empire with the French promoting the rights of Roman Catholics, and Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of the Russian Empire in the previous Russo-Turkish Wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to remains the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.

The churches worked out their differences with the Ottomans and came to an agreement, but both the French Emperor Napoleon III and the Russian Tsar Nicholas I refused to back down. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that demanded the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire be placed under his protection. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise to which Nicholas agreed. When the Ottomans demanded changes to the agreement, Nicholas recanted and prepared for war.

In July 1853, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities now part of Romania but then under Ottoman suzerainty. In October 1853, having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the Russian conduct at Silistra now in Bulgaria. A separate action on the fort town of Kars, in Western Armenia, led to a siege, and an Ottoman effort to reinforce the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at the Battle of Sinop in November 1853. Fearing an Ottoman collapse, the British and the French had their fleets enter the Black Sea in January 1854. They moved north to Varna in June 1854 and arrived just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra.

After a minor skirmish at Köstence now Constanța, the allied commanders decided to attack Russia's leading naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula. After extended preparations, allied forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and marched their way to a section south of Sevastopol after they had won the Battle of the Alma on 20 September 1854. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but the British Army's forces were seriously depleted as a result. ARussian counterattack, at Inkerman November 1854, ended in a stalemate as well. The front settled into the siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Baltic 1854–1856; see Åland War, the Caucasus 1853–1855, the White Sea July–August 1854 and the North Pacific 1854–1855.

Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months, after the French had assaulted Fort Malakoff. 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 popularity. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians there gained a measure of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained advice of the Christian churches in dispute.

The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such(a) as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs. The war was one of the first to be documented extensively in total 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 professionalisation of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering advanced nursing while she treated the wounded.

The Crimean War marked a turning constituent for the Russian Empire. The war weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined Russia's influence in Europe. The empire would pretend decades to recover. Russia's humiliation forced its educated elites to identify its problems and to recognise the need for fundamental reforms. They saw rapid modernisation as the sole way to recover the empire's status as a European power. The war thus 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.

Eastern Question

As the Ottoman Empire ] The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:

In some sense the Crimean war was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat in the conflict for prestige one time it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean… Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean war.

In the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The ] In 1828, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed nearly all of the Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino. In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War 1828–29. The Treaty of Adrianople 1829 authorised Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits. Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities Moldavia and Wallachia became territories under Russian protection.

France took the possibility to occupy Algeria, which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the most effective vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles, which forced Sultan Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople.

"The reasons for the Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the progress of Ibrahim. The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the power which wished, naturally enough, to sources the gate into the Mediterranean". Russia waswith the weak government in Constantinople Istanbul.

As a result, the ]

In 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, ] to the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta, bombarded Beirut and captured Acre. Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions.

On 13 July 1841, after the expiry of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its adjusting to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in effect of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict.

Russian historians tend to notion that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: "The signing of the documents was the solution of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision".[]

In 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of the trade treaty of 1838 see Treaty of Balta Liman, Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in the short term, it gained the opportunity to get the support of European powers primarily Britain in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia.

Publicly, European politicians filed broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston, the head of British diplomacy, said in 1839: "All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. assumption 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power". Needless to say, nothing like this has happened after 10, 20, or even more years.

"British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 ... Thus it was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands".

Assistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than all other states to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea. Austria had the same fears.

Russia, as a member of the Holy Alliance, had operated as the "police of Europe" to submits the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected gratitude for a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe". Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean.

Starting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids, Russia began a southwards expansion across the sparsely-populated "Wild Fields" toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The purpose was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians. When Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with the Ottoman Empire also offered a religious effect of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians, who were legally treated as second-class citizens. The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid.

Britain's instant fear was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward ] Taylor stated the British perspective:

The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey.... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power.

Because of "British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India", the British joined the French, "cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his articles for the New York Tribune around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the "great movement of 1789" against "Russia and Absolutism". He included the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and divided this belief with David Urquhart. Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire.

Mikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University, gave Nicholas a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas'swas filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas divided Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas particularly approved of the coming after or as a result of. passage:

France takes occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese, who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the modification to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission whether it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice.... comment in the margin by Nicholas I: 'This is the whole point'.

Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.

However, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, there were much more of them in the Ottoman Empire. "In a one-to-one fight Nikolai Tsar had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy".

Russian foreign policy was strategically wrong, not apprehension the importance of Britain's trade interests and not understanding the changes in the whole situation after the conclusion of the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 see Treaty of Balta Liman . Russia constantly tried to "honestly" negotiate with Great Britain on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and tried to eliminate all objections from Great Britain, making all concessions.

"The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in the spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg." Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople Istanbul and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. "By signing the convention, the Russians had assumption up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of enhance relations with Britain and isolating France". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. "The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a prerequisites of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests".

French Emperor Napoleon III's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated the immediate institution of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's "sovereign authority" over the Christian population of Palestine, to the detriment of Russia the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy. Tothat, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous main member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.

Russia disputed that attempted conform in authority. Referring to two previous treaties one from 1757 and the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca from 1774, the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

Napoleon III responded with a show of force by sending the ], induced Ottoman Sultan bdülmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Catholic holy places, including the Church of the Nativity, which had been held by the Greek Orthodox Church.