The Crimean War (93 page)
Authors: Orlando Figes
Tags: #History, #Military, #General, #Europe, #Other, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Crimean War; 1853-1856
Walewski, Alexandre Joseph, Count (French Foreign Minister); council of war with allied leaders (1855) and Napoleon’s threat of revolutionary war Paris Peace Congress (1856) Polish independence possible peace talks with Russia Serpent Island incident (1856)
Wallachia autonomy granted (1829) cereal exports to Britain debated at Paris Peace Congress (1856) hospodar ordered to reject Turkish rule preliminaries to Crimean War (1853) repressive occupation by Russians Russian occupation of (1829 – 34) Russian response to 1848 revolution
see also
Romania
Wallachian volunteers, desert from Russian army
war graves, Sevastopol
war memorials: in Britain in France in Sevastopol
war tourism
see also
Duberly, Fanny; spectators
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of
White, Charles, Turcophile pamphlets
White Sea, theatre of war
White Works redoubts (Sevastopol)
Wightman, Trooper (17th Lancers)
Williams, General William, in command in Kars
Wilson, Capt (Coldstream Gds), at Inkerman
Wilson, Sir Robert,
Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia in the Year
1817
winter (1854 – 5); in prospect in actuality the hurricane
Wodehouse, John (British ambassador in St Petersburg)
women: attempts to Westernize Turkish womens dress by the Sultan British army wives
cantinières
Dasha Sevastopolskaia (the heroine of Sevastopol) leaving Sevastopol in Sevastopol spectators at Alma spectators at Balaklava
see also
nurses and nursing
Wood, Midshipman Evelyn, letters home
Woods, Nicholas (war correspondent), report on Inkerman dead
Wrangel, Lt-Gen Baron (cavalry commander), at Evpatoria
Yalta Conference (1945)
Yenikale
see
Kerch, allied raid (1855)
Ye ilköy
see
San Stefano
York, Prince Frederick, Duke of, memorial column
Young, William (British consul)
Young Turks
Ypsilantis, Alexander
Yusuf, General, of Spahis d’Orient
Zamoyski, Wladislav: Czartoryski’s agent in London the ‘Sultan’s Cossacks’
Zherve Battery, fight for possession
Zhukovsky, Vasily, tutor to Alexander II
ORLANDO FIGES is the author of
The Whisperers, Natasha’s Dance,
and
A People’s Tragedy,
which have been translated into over twenty languages. The recipient of the Wolfson History Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, among others, Figes is a professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.
The Whisperers, Natasha’s Dance,
and
A People’s Tragedy,
which have been translated into over twenty languages. The recipient of the Wolfson History Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, among others, Figes is a professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.
a
According to medieval Russian chronicles, the lands of Japheth were settled by the Rus′ and other tribes after the Flood in the Book of Genesis.
b
The Russians were steadily extending their system of fortresses along the Terek river (the ‘Caucasus Line’) and using their newly won protectorate over the Orthodox Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kacheti to build up a base of operations against the Ottomans, occupying Tbilisi and laying the foundations for the Georgian Military Highway to link Russia to the southern Caucasus.
c
Not to be confused with Mehmet Ali, the Egyptian ruler.
d
The name reverted to the Gold Cup after the outbreak of the Crimean War.
e
There is an obvious comparison with the Western view of Russia during the Cold War. The Russophobia of the Cold War era was partly shaped by nineteenth-century attitudes.
f
It also influenced British public opinion on the eve of the Crimean War. In May 1854, ‘The True Story of the Nuns of Minsk’ was published in Charles Dickens’s journal
Household Words
. The author of the article, Florence Nightingale, had met Makrena in Rome in 1848 and had written an account of her ordeal which she then put in a drawer. After the battle of Sinope, when the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, Nightingale brought out the article, which she thought might help to drum up popular support against Russia, and sent it to Dickens, who shortened it into the version that appeared in
Household Words
.
Household Words
. The author of the article, Florence Nightingale, had met Makrena in Rome in 1848 and had written an account of her ordeal which she then put in a drawer. After the battle of Sinope, when the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, Nightingale brought out the article, which she thought might help to drum up popular support against Russia, and sent it to Dickens, who shortened it into the version that appeared in
Household Words
.
g
In 1850 the British public applauded the decision by Palmerston to send the Royal Navy to block the port of Athens in support of Don Pacifico, a British subject who had appealed to the Greek government for compensation after his home was burned down in an anti-Semitic riot in Athens. Don Pacifico was serving as the Portuguese consul in Athens at the time of the attack (he was a Portuguese Jew by descent) but he had been born in Gibraltar and was thus a British subject. On this basis (‘Civis Britannicus Sum’), Palmerston defended his decision to dispatch the fleet.
h
The Austrians and Prussians had agreed to follow Russia’s example, but then backed down, fearing it would cause a break with France. They found a compromise, addressing Napoleon as ‘Monsieur mon frère.’
i
The Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen; Lord John Russell, leader of the House of Commons; Foreign Secretary Lord George Clarendon; Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; and Palmerston, at that time Home Secretary.
j
Nesselrode was supported by Baron Meyendorff, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, who reported to the Tsar on 29 November that the ‘little Christian peoples’ would not fight on Russia’s side. They had never received any help from Russia in the past and had been left in ‘a state of military destitution’, unable to resist the Turks (
Peter von Meyendorff: Ein russischer Diplomat an den Höfen von Berlin und Wien. Politischer und privater Briefwechsel 1826 – 1863
, ed. O. Hoetzsch, 3 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1923), vol. 3).
Peter von Meyendorff: Ein russischer Diplomat an den Höfen von Berlin und Wien. Politischer und privater Briefwechsel 1826 – 1863
, ed. O. Hoetzsch, 3 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1923), vol. 3).
k
A reference to the expeditionary force of General Oudinot in 1849 – 50 which attacked the anti-papal Roman Republic and brought back Pius IX to Rome. The French troops remained in Rome to protect the Pope until 1870.
l
In the Opium Wars of 1839 – 42.
m
A reference to the Don Pacifico affair.
n
In the battle of Poltava (1709) Peter the Great defeated Sweden and established Russia as a Baltic power.
o
It is one of the ironies of the Crimean War that Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary at War in 1852 – 5, was the nephew of this senior Russian general and Anglophile. Mikhail was the son of Count Semyon Vorontsov, who lived for forty-seven years in London, most of them after his retirement as Russia’s ambassador. Semyon’s daughter Catherine married George Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke. A general in the war against Napoleon, Mikhail was appointed governor-general of New Russia in 1823. He did a great deal to establish Odessa, where he built a magnificent palace, promoted the development of steamships on the Black Sea and fought in the war against the Turks in 1828 – 9. Following the Anglophile traditions of his family, Vorontsov built a fabulous Anglo-Moorish palace at Alupka on the Crimea’s southern coast, where the British delegation to the Yalta Conference stayed in 1945.
p
There was no Russian Bible – only a Psalter and a Book of Hours – until the 1870s.
q
One of them now stands in front of the City Duma building on the Primorsky Boulevard.
r
Their determination was given more religious force when Musa Pasha was later killed by a shell that landed directly on him while he was conducting evening prayers for divine intervention to save Silistria.
s
After it was amputated (without anaesthetic) Raglan had asked to have the arm so that he could retrieve a ring given to him by his wife. The incident had sealed his reputation for personal bravery.
t
The first Zouave battalions were recruited from a Berber mountain tribe called the Zouaoua. Later Zouave battalions of Frenchmen adopted their Moorish costumes and green turbans.
u
A tall shako, named after Prince Albert, who supposedly designed it.
v
Events would prove them right. On 8 August Napier launched an allied attack against the Russian fortress at Bomarsund in the Aaland Islands, between Sweden and Finland, mainly with the aim of involving Sweden in the war. The support of Swedish troops was necessary for any move on the Russian capital. After a heavy bombardment that reduced the fortress to rubble, the Russian commander and his 2,000 men surrendered to the allies. But Bomarsund was a minor victory – it was not Kronstadt or St Petersburg – and the Swedes were not impressed, despite strong approaches from the British. Until the allies committed more serious resources to the campaign in the Baltic, there was no real prospect of involving Sweden in the war, let alone threatening St Petersburg. But the allies were divided on the significance of the Baltic. The French were far less keen on it than the British – Palmerston in particular, who dreamed of taking Finland as part of his broader plans to dismantle the Russian Empire – and they were reluctant to commit more troops to a war aim which they saw as serving mainly British interests. For Napoleon, the campaign in the Baltic could be no more than a minor diversion to prevent the Tsar from deploying an even bigger army in the Crimea, the main focus of their war campaign.
w
The British army had allowed four wives per company to go with their men to Gallipoli. Provided for by the army (‘on the strength’) the women performed cooking and laundry services.
x
The first British casualty of the fighting was Sergeant Priestley of the 13th Light Dragoons, who lost a leg. Evacuated to England, he was later presented with a cork leg by the Queen (A. Mitchell,
Recollections of One of the Light Brigade
(London, 1885), p. 50).
Recollections of One of the Light Brigade
(London, 1885), p. 50).
y
Having given the order to advance, Raglan had taken the incredible decision to ride up ahead and get a better view of the attack. With his staff, Raglan crossed the Alma and occupied a position on an exposed spur of Telegraph Hill, well ahead of the British troops and practically adjacent to the Russian skirmishers. ‘It seems marvellous how one escaped,’ wrote Captain Gage, a member of Raglan’s staff, from the Alma the next day. ‘Shells burst close to me, round shot passed to the right, left & over me. Minié and musket whistled by my ears, horses & riders of Ld R’s staff (where I was) fell dead & wounded by my side, & yet I am quite safe & can hardly realize what I have gone thro” (NAM 1968 – 07-484 – 1, ‘Alma Heights Battle Field, Sept. 21st 1854’).
z
A lone Russian woman, Daria Mikhailova, cared for the wounded with a cart and supplies purchased at her own expense. Daria was the 18-year-old daughter of a Sevastopol sailor killed at the battle of Sinope. At the time of the invasion, she was working as a laundress in the Sevastopol naval garrison. According to popular legend, she sold everything she had inherited from her father, bought a horse and cart from a Jewish trader, cut her hair and dressed up as a sailor, and went with the army to the Alma, where she distributed water, food and wine to the wounded soldiers, even tearing her own clothes to make dressings for their wounds, which she cleaned with vinegar. The soldiers saw through Daria’s disguise, but she was allowed to carry on with her heroic work in the dressing station at Kacha and then as a nurse in the hospitals of Sevastopol during the siege. Legends spread about the ‘heroine of Sevastopol’. She came to symbolize the patriotic spirit of the common people as well as the Russian female ‘spirit of sacrifice’ that poets such as Alexander Pushkin had romanticized. Not knowing her family name, the soldiers in the hospitals of Sevastopol called her Dasha Sevastopolskaia, and that is how she has gone down in history. In December 1854 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Zeal by the Tsar, becoming the only Russian woman of non-noble origin ever to receive that honour; the Empress gave her a silver cross with the inscription ‘Sevastopol’. In 1855 Daria married a retired wounded soldier and opened a tavern in Sevastopol, where she lived until her death in 1892 (H. Rappaport,
No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War
(London, 2007), p. 77).
No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War
(London, 2007), p. 77).
aa
The engineering department of the War Ministry had failed to implement a plan of 1834 to reinforce the city’s defensive works, claiming lack of finance, though at the same time millions were spent on the fortification of Kiev, several hundred kilometres from the border. Afraid of an Austrian attack through south-west Russia, Nicholas I had kept a large reserve of troops in the Kiev area, but saw no need to do so in Sevastopol since he dismissed the danger of an attack by the Turks or the Western powers in the Black Sea. He had overlooked the huge significance of steamships, which made it possible to carry large armies by sea.
ab
According to a Russian source, the Tatar spies were shot on the orders of the British when the truth was discovered (S. Gershel’man,
Nravstvennyi element pod Sevastopolem
(St Petersburg, 1897), p. 86).
Nravstvennyi element pod Sevastopolem
(St Petersburg, 1897), p. 86).
ac
A pejorative Turkish term for a Balkan Christian.
ad
After the Russian annexation of the Crimea, the Giray clan had fled to the Ottoman Empire. In the early nineteenth century the Girays had served as administrators for the Ottomans in the Balkans and had entered into military service. The Ottoman Empire had various military units made up of Crimean émigrés. They had fought against the Russians in 1828 – 9, and were part of the Turkish forces on the Danubian front in 1853 – 4. Mussad Giray was stationed in Varna. It was there that he persuaded the allied commanders to take him with them to the Crimea to rally Tatar support for their invasion. On 20 September the allies sent Mussad Giray back to the Balkans, praising him for his efforts and considering that his job was done. After the Crimean War, the French awarded him with a Légion d’honneur medal.
ae
Balaklava (originally Bella Clava: ‘beautiful port’) was named by the Genoese, who built much of the port and saw it thrive until their expulsion by the Turks in the fifteenth century. Plundered by the Turks, the town remained a virtual ruin until the nineteenth century, although there was a monastery in the hills above the town and some Greek soldiers stationed there, who were expelled by the allies.
af
A hot drink made with honey and spices.
ag
Defensive tall wicker baskets filled with earth.
ah
A Turkish term for a woman who is dressed improperly. In the Ottoman period it was used to describe non-Muslim women and had sexual connotations, implying that the woman ran a brothel or was herself a prostitute.
ai
It is something of a mystery as to why the Russians, faced by such a tiny defence force, did not make a quicker and more powerful attack against Balaklava. Various Russian commanders later claimed that they lacked sufficient troops to capture Balaklava, that the operation had been a reconnaissance, or that it was an attempt to divert the allied forces from Sevastopol rather than capture the port. But these were excuses for their failure, which perhaps could be explained by their lack of confidence against the allied armies on an open battlefield after the defeat of the Russian forces at the Alma.
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