Can history provide any clues? Vladimir Putin likes to talk about World War II as Russia’s best war, but the closest parallel is probably the Crimean War, which lasted two and a half years, from 1853 to 1856, before the exhausted belligerents concluded a peace treaty agreement. A Russian army that failed to achieve any of its objectives. But the British and French, allied with the Turks, faced their own disappointments as they marched to a victory that at times felt pyrrhic. Paradoxically, one of the great legacies of the war was felt in the US, where an unexpected chain of events, linked to the defeat of Russia, helped end slavery. Can we learn lessons from the Crimean War today?
Wars end differently than they begin
Carl von Clausewitz wrote: “In war more than anywhere else things do not turn out as we expect.” Few expected war in 1853. When it came, most predictions proved inaccurate, including the belief that the Russian army was invincible, especially when fighting close to the Motherland. The Crimean War started over the smallest of reasons, when Russian and French monks argued over who had the right to the key to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As it turned out, this key would unlock Pandora’s box, leading the Czar of Russia, Nicholas I, to invade the Ottoman Empire with hopes of conquering Constantinople, now Constantinople. The Ottomans were joined by France and Britain, who sent ships and troops to the Black Sea. A war of attrition ensued, involving naval battles all the way to the Baltic and the Pacific. Only a miracle can free him from the difficulties that burden him and Russia from the pride, shallowness and stupidity of Karl Marx about Nicholas I
Badly trained soldiers fight badly
Before the Crimean War, Russia’s massive army was feared throughout Europe. But his weakness soon became apparent. With demoralized troops, many young conscripts or landless serfs, Russia lost most engagements and ended the conflict with its military reputation in tatters. His weapons were far inferior to those of the British and French, who had steam-powered frigates and guns that fired accurately at long distances. Despite these advantages, victory came at a high price and there were tensions within the alliance. Serious tactical blunders prevented the French and British from winning more decisively, and each side suffered around 250,000 casualties, most of whom died of disease. This led to a third lesson… Roger Fenton’s mobile darkroom. Photo: Roger Fenton/Library of Congress
It is difficult to wage an anti-people war
The invention of the camera and the telegraph allowed a new generation of witnesses to cover the Crimean War in detail. There were still spontaneous accounts of dering-do – a meaningless memento of the conflict was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, which turned a colossal act of stupidity – a general’s reckless order to attack an impregnable position – in a puddle of Victorian piety. But the spread of photography and rapid dispatches from the front silenced that old-fashioned kind of writing, as cellphones blunted Putin’s efforts to label his invasion a success and focused attention on possible war crimes. Working in a wine wagon converted into a mobile darkroom, a British photographer, Roger Fenton, managed to capture the visual history of war in stunningly sharp images. Journalists filed stories from the front so that readers in London and Paris could experience the war from their armchairs. This helped build support when the war was going well, but also increased pressure when it wasn’t. Even American readers were following the war, thanks to the remarkable reporting of a London-based German journalist, Karl Marx, who filed 113 articles for the New York Tribune. Marx was a harsh critic of Russia’s military adventure, pointing out its strategic ambiguity, incompetence and utter waste of human life. Denouncing the tsar as an “imperial blunder”, he poured out the perfume that could make Putin cringe today: “Only a miracle can deliver him from the difficulties that now afflict him and Russia from pride, shallowness and his poverty”. Abraham Lincoln, in an image taken in 1863. Photo: Alexander Gardner/Reuters
An indefinite peace will lead to new problems
The Treaty of Paris ended hostilities in 1856, but left many other concerns unaddressed, including the porous borders of Southeast Europe – the “Eastern Question” would plague leaders until the first world war in 1914. After a relatively long peace after in the Napoleonic era, the Crimean War unleashed a new instability in the politics of the great powers. Europe would see a series of small, nasty wars before the massive carnage of the 20th century.
Wars have far reaching consequences
Nicholas I died in 1855. His son, Alexander II, accepted defeat but then did a remarkable thing. Examining the causes of the disaster, he recognized that Russia’s performance was related to its rigid class structure and heavy dependence on serfs. Consequently, he abolished serfdom with an Emancipation Proclamation on March 3, 1861. Coincidentally, this was the day before Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States. Lincoln understood the power of precedent and issued an Emancipation Proclamation of his own on the first day of 1863. In other words, a war that had absolutely nothing to do with freedom when it started helped make possible one of the greatest handiwork in history, on a different continent, a decade later. The American market of Alaska was another legacy. After the Crimea, the young tsar knew he could not defend this distant frontier and decided to sell it to a nation with a more realistic hope of inhabiting it someday. In this, and in many other ways, we continue to live in a world shaped by a small, mostly forgotten war in southeastern Europe.
Ted Widmer is a distinguished lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York and the author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington, published in the US by Simon and Schuster.
