[9] In September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed on the Crimean Peninsula in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol, and scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma.

The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalisation of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.

Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe".

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.

"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 George Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St.

To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous leading member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.

Nesselrode confided to Seymour: [The dispute over the holy places] had assumed a new character—that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs.

The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence—violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance.

"The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming the terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept".

[59] Nicholas fumed at "the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question,[60] The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities.

Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence.

Shortly after the Tsar had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, he sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Prut into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.

Lord Cowley wrote on 8 February to Burgoyne, "Your visit to Paris has produced a visible change in the Emperor's views, and he is making every preparation for a land expedition in case the last attempt at negotiation should break down".

[90] The naval operations of the Crimean War commenced with the dispatch in mid-1853 of the French and the British fleets to the Black Sea region, to support the Ottomans and to dissuade the Russians from encroachment.

To show support for the Ottomans after the Battle of Sinop, on 22 December 1853, the Anglo-French squadron entered the Black Sea and the steamship HMS Retribution approached the Port of Sevastopol.

[98] On 25 September, the whole army began to march southeast and encircled the city from the south after it had established port facilities at Balaclava for the British and at Kamiesch (Russian: Камышовая бухта, romanized: Kamyshovaya bukhta) for the French.

After the local commanders had failed to take advantage of the retreat, Lord Raglan sent out orders to move up and to prevent the withdrawal of naval guns from the recently captured redoubts on the heights.

[118] On 24 May 1855, 60 ships, containing 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish and 3,000 British troops, set off for a raid on the city of Kerch, east of Sevastopol, in an attempt to open another front in Crimea and to cut off Russian supplies.

In the north, Georgiy Evseevich Eristov pushed southwest, fought two battles, forced the Ottomans back to Batumi, retired behind the Cholok river and suspended action for the rest of the year (June).

At the same time, the British and French commanders Sir Charles Napier and Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes although they led the largest fleet assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, considered the Sveaborg fortress too well-defended to engage.

[133] The burning of tar warehouses and ships led to international criticism, and in London the MP Thomas Milner Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain "a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers".

[139] Camillo di Cavour, under orders of Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia, sent an expeditionary corps of 15,000 soldiers, commanded by General Alfonso La Marmora, to side with French and British forces during the war.

The deployment of Italian troops to Crimea, and the gallantry shown by them in the Battle of the Chernaya (16 August 1855) and in the Siege of Sevastopol, allowed the Kingdom of Sardinia to be among the participants at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the Risorgimento to other European powers.

[146][better source needed] Dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war was growing with the public in Britain and other countries and was worsened by reports of fiascos, especially the devastating losses of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava.

[154][155] By Article IV, Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Empire restored to Russia "the towns and ports of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Kamish, Eupatoria, Kerch, Jenikale, Kinburn as well as all other territories occupied by the allied troops".

In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the country's defences, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on...

The Crimean War marked the re-ascendancy of France to the position of pre-eminent power on the Continent,[169] the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire and a period of crisis for Imperial Russia.

[174] Bismarck, having declared it impossible to keep 100 million Russians in a humiliated position without sovereign rights to their Black Sea coastline,[175] supported Russia against the Treaty of Paris, and in return, Prussia achieved freedom of action against France in 1870–71 and inflicted a crushing defeat on it.

When the first enthusiasm was passed, when the dead were mourned, the sufferings revealed, and the cost counted, when in 1870 Russia was able calmly to secure the revocation of the Treaty, which disarmed her in the Black Sea, the view became general of the war was stupid and unnecessary, and effected nothing...

The Times war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing "A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.