The Crimean War.The Truth Behind the Myth.

Kitap İngilizce

Künye:

Yazarlar:

Clive Ponting

Ekle

Emeği Geçenler:

Ekle

Yayın Yılı:

2004

Yayın Yeri:

London

Yayıncı:

Chatto And Windus

Cilt:

Basım Kaydı:

Sayfa Sayısı:

404

ISBN:

İçerik Dosyası:

Web adresi:

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Operatör:

Emily Malara

Güncelleyen:

Ömer Faruk Uzun

Özet:

As the author observes in his lucid preface to this new narrative history of the Crimean war, most people remember the Russian conflict chiefly on account of Balaklava and the heroic, if disastrously mistaken, charge of the Light Brigade; that, and the name of Florence Nightingale, a young woman who, ignorant of germs but a stickler for open windows and cleanliness, revolutionised hospital practices.The war supposedly had its origins in the rivalry between French Catholic and Greek Orthodox monks for the right to guard the holy places in Jerusalem. When Russian claims developed into a demand by Tsar Nicholas to be recognised as the protector of all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman empire, the Emperor Napoleon III, eager to assert the influence of France in the east, voiced his support for the Catholics. Beneath all this lay the French, British and Russian realisation that Turkey, regarded by many as the "sick man" of Europe, was ripe for the conquest and division of its immense and crumbling empire.

By the end of March 1854, Britain found itself committed to a major conflict, its first in nearly 40 years. The timing was poor, the army unready and its generals past their prime. The commander in chief was 66-year-old Lord Raglan, who had lost an arm at Waterloo and whose career had been enhanced by his marriage to a niece of Wellington. He had never, before 1854, commanded as large a unit as a battalion, let alone had any experience of modern warfare. General Sir George Brown, two years his junior, was appointed to lead the Light Division and was considered the most unpopular infantry officer in the army. The most disliked cavalry officer was undoubtedly Lord Lucan, closely shadowed by his brother-in-law, the Earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade.

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The head of the French army wasn't much better, although more colourful; he had been a fencing and dancing master in London, had changed his name many times to avoid payment of debts, and once worked in a Belgian theatre as a comedian called Floridor. Before he left for the Crimea he was diagnosed with angina and intestinal cancer, and given four months to live.

Clive Ponting's exhaustively researched and scholarly history is subtitled "The Story Behind the Myth". It is indeed an exciting story and one that benefits from accounts written at the time by various soldiers and observers. Of the latter, the eye-witness reports composed by the first-ever war correspondent, William Russell of the Times, who on landing in the Crimea poetically noted the wild lavender blowing in the stubble fields, are the most absorbing and curious, not least because it was believed that he was an impartial recorder of the conflict. As Ponting reveals, Russell's reports are part of the myth and should be treated as such, for he, along with most of his contemporaries, was anti-Ottoman (the Turks were seen as grubby, cowardly orientals) and virulently anti-French. From some of his descriptions of battle it would be difficult to believe that the French had any part in the fighting. He was, however, as Ponting conceeds, doing his duty as he saw it, which was to tell middle-class members of the British public what they wanted to hear.

Before the fall of Sebastopol there were only three main battles - the Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman. Russell wrote of the Alma attack: "The front of the Russian line above us burst into a volcano of flame and white smoke ... the roar of the artillery became terrible ... the shot came flying close to me, one indeed killing a bandsman who was near my side. It knocked away the side of his face ... a horrible sight. The rush of shot was appalling and I recollect that I was annoyed by birds which were flying about distractedly in the smoke ... I thought they were fragments of shell."

Of Balaklava and that tragic advance into the valley of death, one British officer recorded: "A great gloom is cast over the army from a most dreadful disaster that happened to our Light Cavalry ... which no longer exists ... we all pray that whoever is to blame for this may be made to answer for it."Russell provided an account carefully judged to appeal to Victorian ideals of military heroism and a detestation of Russian barbarism. "There took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations ... to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and cannister on the mass of struggling men and horses."

Of Inkerman, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "It was a treacherous, revolting business ... we had to retreat, because half our troops had no artillery owing to the roads being impassable, and - God knows why - there were no infantry battalions. Terrible slaughter! Lord forgive them!"

On September 9 1856, the siege of Sebastopol ended and French and British troops entered the destroyed town. The final casualty toll of the Crimean war was higher than in the American civil war, which lasted twice as long. Of the probable 650,000 dead, almost three-quarters were Russians. On the Franco-British side, the French lost 95,000 men, the British 22,000, but of these just 4,000 died in action or from wounds received in battle. The majority of deaths on both sides were as a direct result of cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, frostbite, malaria and scurvy.

Seven years later Russia was ready to attack the Ottomans again. This time the French were too weak to retaliate and the British returned to their original policy of ignoring Europe and preparing for a war against their real ememy, France.

This is Ponting's conclusion. "The Crimean war settled into the comforting mythology of the heroism of the charge of the Light Brigade and the self-sacrifice of Florence Nightingale."

·

By the end of March 1854, Britain found itself committed to a major conflict, its first in nearly 40 years. The timing was poor, the army unready and its generals past their prime. The commander in chief was 66-year-old Lord Raglan, who had lost an arm at Waterloo and whose career had been enhanced by his marriage to a niece of Wellington. He had never, before 1854, commanded as large a unit as a battalion, let alone had any experience of modern warfare. General Sir George Brown, two years his junior, was appointed to lead the Light Division and was considered the most unpopular infantry officer in the army. The most disliked cavalry officer was undoubtedly Lord Lucan, closely shadowed by his brother-in-law, the Earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade.

The head of the French army wasn't much better, although more colourful; he had been a fencing and dancing master in London, had changed his name many times to avoid payment of debts, and once worked in a Belgian theatre as a comedian called Floridor. Before he left for the Crimea he was diagnosed with angina and intestinal cancer, and given four months to live.

Clive Ponting's exhaustively researched and scholarly history is subtitled "The Story Behind the Myth". It is indeed an exciting story and one that benefits from accounts written at the time by various soldiers and observers. Of the latter, the eye-witness reports composed by the first-ever war correspondent, William Russell of the Times, who on landing in the Crimea poetically noted the wild lavender blowing in the stubble fields, are the most absorbing and curious, not least because it was believed that he was an impartial recorder of the conflict. As Ponting reveals, Russell's reports are part of the myth and should be treated as such, for he, along with most of his contemporaries, was anti-Ottoman (the Turks were seen as grubby, cowardly orientals) and virulently anti-French. From some of his descriptions of battle it would be difficult to believe that the French had any part in the fighting. He was, however, as Ponting conceeds, doing his duty as he saw it, which was to tell middle-class members of the British public what they wanted to hear.

Before the fall of Sebastopol there were only three main battles - the Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman. Russell wrote of the Alma attack: "The front of the Russian line above us burst into a volcano of flame and white smoke ... the roar of the artillery became terrible ... the shot came flying close to me, one indeed killing a bandsman who was near my side. It knocked away the side of his face ... a horrible sight. The rush of shot was appalling and I recollect that I was annoyed by birds which were flying about distractedly in the smoke ... I thought they were fragments of shell."

Of Balaklava and that tragic advance into the valley of death, one British officer recorded: "A great gloom is cast over the army from a most dreadful disaster that happened to our Light Cavalry ... which no longer exists ... we all pray that whoever is to blame for this may be made to answer for it."Russell provided an account carefully judged to appeal to Victorian ideals of military heroism and a detestation of Russian barbarism. "There took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations ... to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and cannister on the mass of struggling men and horses."

Of Inkerman, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "It was a treacherous, revolting business ... we had to retreat, because half our troops had no artillery owing to the roads being impassable, and - God knows why - there were no infantry battalions. Terrible slaughter! Lord forgive them!"

On September 9 1856, the siege of Sebastopol ended and French and British troops entered the destroyed town. The final casualty toll of the Crimean war was higher than in the American civil war, which lasted twice as long. Of the probable 650,000 dead, almost three-quarters were Russians. On the Franco-British side, the French lost 95,000 men, the British 22,000, but of these just 4,000 died in action or from wounds received in battle. The majority of deaths on both sides were as a direct result of cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, frostbite, malaria and scurvy.

Seven years later Russia was ready to attack the Ottomans again. This time the French were too weak to retaliate and the British returned to their original policy of ignoring Europe and preparing for a war against their real ememy, France.

This is Ponting's conclusion. "The Crimean war settled into the comforting mythology of the heroism of the charge of the Light Brigade and the self-sacrifice of Florence Nightingale."