35.2 KT2 - The Crimean War, 1854-56

The Enquiry Frame

This is a Paper 3 depth key topic. The specification asks you to study three connected issues:

Keep the chronology firm:

The most useful overall argument is this: the Crimean War made British warfare more public. Earlier wars had also involved suffering, administrative muddle and disease, but Crimea was reported and pictured with unusual immediacy. The public could celebrate soldiers' courage while condemning the state that failed to feed, clothe, transport and treat them.

Russian Threat and Aims

The Crimean War grew out of the Eastern Question: what would happen as the Ottoman Empire weakened, and how far should Russia be allowed to expand its influence around the Black Sea, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean? Britain did not fight because Crimea itself was a normal British interest. It fought because Russian pressure on the Ottoman Empire seemed to threaten the balance of power, routes to India and British influence in the Mediterranean world.

The immediate background was a dispute over Christian holy places in Palestine and Russian claims to protect Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. That dispute mattered, but it was not the whole cause. It became dangerous because Tsar Nicholas I used religious protection as part of a wider diplomatic pressure on the Sultan. When Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853, Britain and France feared that Russia was trying to dominate Ottoman territory.

Britain and France declared war on Russia in March 1854. At first, British and French armies assembled at Varna to support the Ottomans near the Danube. Then the situation shifted. Ottoman resistance at Silistria, Austrian pressure and Russian withdrawal from the principalities made the army at Varna less useful for its original purpose. British ministers and commanders instead turned towards Crimea and Sebastopol.

Sebastopol was important because it was Russia's main naval base on the Black Sea. If Britain and France could damage or capture it, they would weaken Russian naval power and make Russian pressure on the Ottoman Empire harder to sustain. This explains why a war that began over the Ottoman Empire became, for British memory, a war about the Crimean peninsula.

The British war aim therefore had three layers:

Lord Raglan entered this situation as commander of the British expeditionary army. FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan, had served under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, where he lost an arm. He had courage, social authority, diplomatic manners and long military experience. But he had never commanded a large army in a modern coalition war. The British Army itself had not fought a major European conflict since 1815. This matters because Raglan's weaknesses were partly personal and partly systemic.

Raglan had to coordinate with French commanders, Ottoman allies, naval authorities, the Commissariat, medical departments and distant politicians. These bodies did not form one smooth machine. The army's administrative system was fragmented, and responsibility for supplies, transport and medical care was often divided. That does not excuse every decision Raglan made, but it prevents a lazy judgement in which one man is blamed for every failure.

The Russian threat in Crimea was real, but it was not the image of an unstoppable Russian army sweeping Europe. Russian forces could fight hard and had strong defensive positions, but they also suffered from poor communications, limited railways and difficulty supplying Crimea from the Russian interior. The British problem was therefore not that Russia was militarily superior at every point. It was that Britain struggled to turn battlefield success into a well-supported campaign.

The first exam judgement is this: Britain entered Crimea with a clear enough strategic target, Sebastopol, but without a military-administrative system fit for the conditions of a long siege far from home.

Alma, Balaclava and Raglan

The Allied landing in Crimea began on 14 September 1854. By 18 September, British, French and Ottoman troops had landed and started moving south towards Sebastopol. The first major obstacle was the Russian army under Prince Menshikov, positioned on the heights above the River Alma.

The Battle of the Alma on 20 September was an Allied victory. British and French forces attacked uphill against Russian positions. The British assault was not perfectly controlled: units became mixed, orders were unclear, and fighting was confused. Even so, British infantry pressed forward, Russian resistance broke, and Menshikov's army retreated. The victory mattered because it opened the road towards Sebastopol and gave the British public a first major success to celebrate.

Yet Alma also exposed the central problem of the campaign: victory was not exploited decisively. The Allies did not immediately rush into Sebastopol from the north. They instead marched around the city and established siege positions to the south, using Balaclava as the British supply base and Kamiesch as the French base. This gave Russian engineers and defenders time to strengthen Sebastopol's defences. A battle that might have led to a rapid capture became the beginning of a long siege.

Raglan's role at Alma should be judged carefully. He was not a cowardly or useless commander. He showed personal bravery, worked with French allies and helped secure an important victory. But the confusion of the attack and the failure to exploit the result show limits in command, intelligence and coordination. The British Army could fight; it could not always convert fighting power into strategic momentum.

Balaclava on 25 October showed the same mixture of courage and confusion even more dramatically. Russian forces attacked towards the British supply port at Balaclava. Their aim was to threaten the base that connected the British siege lines with food, ammunition, clothing and medical evacuation. If Balaclava fell, the British position before Sebastopol might become impossible.

The battle produced four notable episodes:

The Light Brigade charge was not a random accident. It grew from a chain of miscommunication. Raglan, watching from high ground, could see Russian troops trying to remove captured guns from the heights. He sent an order through Captain Nolan to Lord Lucan, commander of the cavalry, asking the cavalry to advance and prevent the enemy taking away the guns. Lucan and Cardigan, lower down and without Raglan's view, interpreted the order as an attack down the valley at the Russian battery directly ahead. The result was a frontal charge under fire from three sides.

About 673 men went forward; around 260 were killed or wounded. The numbers matter, but so does the meaning. The charge did not win Balaclava. It became famous because it allowed Britons to separate the bravery of ordinary soldiers and junior officers from the failures of senior command. Tennyson's later poem captured that distinction: obedience and sacrifice could be admired even when the order was disastrous.

Balaclava's military impact was also serious. The Russians failed to capture the port, so the British did not lose their base. But the Russians gained positions overlooking the road between Balaclava and the siege lines. That made supply harder. In a campaign already dependent on a single exposed route, Balaclava turned logistics from a background issue into a central threat.

Raglan's reputation suffered because of Balaclava. His order was too loose for the situation, and his command system failed to ensure that Lucan and Cardigan understood the objective. At the same time, the blame cannot be placed on Raglan alone. Lucan and Cardigan had a bitter personal relationship; Nolan's delivery of the order was unclear; cavalry doctrine prized obedience; and the British Army had no modern staff system capable of preventing such confusion.

The strongest judgement on Alma and Balaclava is therefore mixed. Alma showed that Allied forces could defeat Russia in the field. Balaclava showed that British soldiers could endure and perform under pressure. But both battles revealed that British command was brittle: it depended too much on personal understanding, courage and improvisation, and too little on clear staff work, logistics and follow-through.

Siege and Winter Crisis

The siege of Sebastopol was the military centre of the Crimean campaign. After Alma, the Allies expected that Sebastopol might fall quickly. Instead, the siege lasted from October 1854 until September 1855. That long siege changed the war. It turned a campaign of movement into a test of endurance, supply, engineering, artillery, coalition cooperation and medical care.

The first major bombardment began on 17 October 1854, but it did not break the Russian defences. Russian engineers, especially Eduard Totleben, strengthened the city with earthworks, bastions, gun positions and defensive lines. The Allies also had to fight off Russian attempts to break the siege, especially Balaclava in October and Inkerman on 5 November. Inkerman was a brutal, confused battle in fog. The British held their ground with French support, but the fighting drained strength just as winter began.

The siege mattered for three main reasons:

The winter of 1854-55 was the turning point in public criticism. On 14 November 1854 a violent storm destroyed tents and wrecked ships, including vessels carrying winter clothing, food, medical supplies and fodder. Transport animals died from exposure and lack of feed. The road from Balaclava to the siege lines became a muddy track. Soldiers lacked proper shelter, warm clothing, fuel and adequate rations. Some had to walk miles to collect supplies that existed in store but could not be moved efficiently to the front.

This distinction is important. The problem was not always absolute scarcity. Sometimes supplies were present at Balaclava but trapped by poor transport and administrative confusion. That made public anger sharper. It seemed unforgivable that British soldiers were freezing, hungry and sick while equipment lay inaccessible.

Medical evacuation was part of the same failure. Britain had brought too few ambulances. When horses and mules died, the wounded could not easily be moved from battlefield to harbour. Men who reached Balaclava then had to survive the voyage to Scutari near Constantinople. There, hospitals were overwhelmed, under-supplied and unsanitary. Disease, including cholera, dysentery and fever, killed far more men than enemy fire.

The siege also exposed limits in Raglan's command. He remained personally respected by many soldiers and worked under difficult conditions, but he was commander while the British army suffered catastrophic administrative weakness. He cannot be blamed for every broken system, but he was part of a high-command culture that had not prepared for a modern expeditionary siege.

In June 1855 the Allies launched a major assault. The French attacked the Malakoff area and the British attacked the Redan. On 18 June the British attack on the Redan failed, with heavy casualties. Raglan died on 28 June 1855, before the final success of the siege. His death made him a tragic figure, but it did not remove the larger lesson: British command and administration had struggled to match the demands of industrial-era war.