Crimean War

Crimean War

 

 

Crimean War

The Crimean War (1853-56): Source Analysis

BACKGROUND: William Howard Russell & the Crimean War, by Eamon Dyas (Times Online, October 19, 2004)

The war in the Crimea provided British history with two of its most potent iconographic images, the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Lady with the Lamp. Various factors contributed - it was the first war in which the telegraph was to figure, and the first to be systematically photographed - but their immortality was chiefly ensured by William Howard Russell's reporting for The Times.

Russell, then a young reporter, had been sent to the Crimea as special correspondent in February 1854, by The Times's editor, John Thadeus Delane. Delane believed that he would be back by Easter, but events were to keep him there for 18 months.

By 1855, under the incentive of military requirements, a telegraph was established between Balaclava and Varna. Russell was aware of the advantages the telegraph offered but, because of military monopoly, was very rarely able to use it. Consequently the average time it took to get his messages from the front to The Times in London was three weeks.

Russell also witnessed the first use of the camera in war. His diary of March 19, 1855, records the arrival of Roger Fenton who had been commissioned to compile a photographic record of the conflict by Thomas Agnew & Sons of Manchester. Fenton brought with him two assistants, five cameras, 700 glass plates and a mobile darkroom, and spent nearly four months in the Crimea. However, the photographic technology of the time would not allow him to take action pictures and he had to content himself with images of landscapes, camp scenes, fortifications, and portraits of leading personalities. In May 1855 Russell had his own photograph taken by Fenton.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

The battle took place on the morning of October 25, 1854, at Balaclava. The first news to reach the British public came in The Times on November 4, in the form of a Foreign Office telegram from Constantinople (it had been passed to the paper by the Duke of Newcastle, then Secretary for War). The event would have remained just one military disaster among many, were it not for the vivid descriptive power of Russell's letter, dispatched on October 26. It took almost 20 days to reach London and was published in on November 14.

It was this description of the battle that inspired Alfred Lord Tennyson to compose his Charge of the Light Brigade, published in a collection called Maud and other poems in 1855.

Florence Nightingale at Scutari

Russell's reports of the plight of the soldiers and his criticism of the medical facilities undoubtedly contributed to Florence Nightingale's determination to help. However, it was a report of the conditions at the military hospital at Scutari by Russell's colleague, Thomas Chenery, that proved the catalyst. Chenery wrote from Constantinople on September 30, 1854, the report appearing in the paper on October 12.

In direct response, Sir Robert Peel, son of the former Prime Minister, sent the editor of The Times a cheque for £200 to start a fund for supplying comforts to the sick and wounded - what was to become The Times Crimea Fund. Money poured in from all over Britain. On the October 13, Chenery again commented upon the excellent nursing work being done for the French by the Sisters of Charity and on the 14th a correspondent to the paper was asking "Why have we no Sisters of Charity?".

It would be wrong to claim that the decision of Florence Nightingale to assemble her team of nurses was a direct result of Chenery's exposures (approaches had already been made by Lady Maria Forester to Nightingale offering to pay for a nursing expedition), but there is little doubt that Chenery's and Russell's reports contributed to it. By October 21 she had assembled her first staff of 38 nurses, of whom 18 were nuns.

In the meantime, The Times Crimea Fund had amassed almost £7,000 and John C. MacDonald, engineer and later manager of The Times, was chosen to act as its almoner. Another Times colleague, Henry Reeve, was a friend of the Nightingale family and interceded with the editor, Delane, on behalf of the nurses. MacDonald was instructed to cooperate with Florence Nightingale and they sailed on the same ship from Marseilles.

On her arrival at Scutari, Nightingale embarked on radical changes to the medical arrangements. The public funds were hedged with bureaucratic procedures, and she had to meet costs partly from her own funds and partly through donations made by MacDonald from The Times fund. She and MacDonald evolved a close working relationship, and the fund became a powerful weapon against official incompetence. As a result the newspaper was subjected to a campaign of vilification from elements in the establishment, who either denied that things were as bad as reported or imputed base motives for the paper's involvement.

MacDonald filed a detailed report on the Sick and Wounded Fund and the condition of the hospitals at Scutari, which was published on February 3. This pre-empted the plan to wind up the fund. Instead a renewed appeal was made which brought in £8,000 in just four days.

MacDonald was subsequently replaced by W. H. Stowe as almoner of the fund. Stowe, a literary critic on the newspaper, arrived in the Crimea in the spring of 1855. In May, Russell left the Balaclava camp to accompany the expedition to Kertch and Stowe came from Scutari to take his place. Shortly after his arrival he contracted cholera. As a civilian he was refused admission to the military hospital, and died on June 22 age 30 years. The Times of July 6 published a eulogy of his work in the Crimea as well as an indignant protest at his treatment.

The event has led to a determination in which we hope to have the concurrence of our supporters. We shall not send out another friend, another valuable life, to a service in which, among other dangers, British inhumanity is to be encountered. Whoever goes out to administer our Fund must expect that, in the event of his sickening in the crown - and almost everybody there does sicken at one time or another, till he is acclimated - he will be excluded from the hospitals where he is sent to minister, and deprived of the medical aid which he has, perhaps, assisted with the most needful supplies.

Another Times journalist, Frederick Hardman finished the work undertaken by MacDonald and Stowe. By this time the hospitals were well equipped, and little remained beyond supplying reading matter for the convalescents and supervising the "Inkerman Café" which The Times had established, with the collaboration of Florence Nightingale, between the two main hospitals at Scutari. The fall of Sebastopol in September represented the beginning of the end for the Russian forces.

Through its uncompromising reporting of the events in the Crimea The Times gained the respect of the public and achieved a standing never before reached by a newspaper. This did not come without cost. A significant section of the establishment accused the newspaper of providing information and encouragement to the enemy by publishing reports of the strength, situation and condition of the Army. Closer to home, the paper also lost one of its best journalists in William Stowe.

However, if Russell had not set out to shock the conscience of the nation there would have been no Times Fund, no mission of Florence Nightingale, no reform of the military commissariat, no shake-up of the political establishment, and no reinforcements on the scale eventually sent. The resultant condition of the Army would have left it in no state to pursue the war to its successful conclusion.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17629-1317949,00.html

1. PRIMARY SOURCE: William Howard Russell's report, published November 14, 1854 (Times, London)

At ten minutes past eleven, our Light Cavalry Brigade advanced  . . . As they rushed towards the front, the Russians opened on them from guns in the redoubt on the right, with volleys of musketry and rifles. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. We could scarcely believe the evidence of our senses! Surely that handful of men are not going to charge an army in position? Alas! it was but too true - their desperate valour knew no bounds, as far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part - discretion. They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death. At the distance of 1200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken, it is joined by the second, they never halt or check their speed an instant; with diminished ranks, thinned by those thirty guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their heads, and with a cheer that was many a noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies and with the carcasses of horses.
They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I have said; to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of Russian infantry and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale - demi-gods could not have done what we had failed to do . . . At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of those bloody Muscovite guns.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17629-1317953,00.html

1. PRIMARY SOURCE: Excerpts from Letters by Captain W. P. Richards to his mother, Camp Sebastopol

October 7, 1854
I have no news to tell you, we are still losing a great many men and officers, but the mortality is daily decreasing and the cholera nearly gone, we that is, the English army, have lost nearly 9,000 men, killed, wounded, dead and sick on board ships, since we landed in the Crimea. I have myself enjoyed the best of health, in fact they say I am like iron. I heard by the last mail from old Sam Batcheller, who tells me of four more vacancies. I am now 21st for promotion, and I also hear that five Generals are going to retire and six more General Officers, also that there is to be a Battalion about November, if this is true, I shall get my promotion this year, if not about April. If I am well I intend when the Army goes into winter quarters to apply for five months leave of absence to England, as I do not see the fun of wintering here which is far from healthy, and I should like to be home for a short time….
November 7, 1854
Lord Raglan gave an order that the Cavalry should charge and retake the guns (by the way no one knew where they were then), the consequence was, the cavalry charged slap into the centre of the Russian Army and nearly the whole were killed, wounded or taken prisoners. They performed prodigies of valour, but were cut up by artillery and musketry. The remainder cut their way back, after this we left the Russians on the hills (where they subsequently entrenched themselves), and returned to our camp. The next day the 26th they were so plucky at their success of the day before, that they resolved to attack the right of our army, and drive the whole of us into the sea.
They (that is the common Russian soldiers), were told we were so frightened that directly they showed themselves, we should run away. They then made them drunk, this they always do, and sent them at us, but they did not send any guns with them. Well we turned out (1st and 2nd Divisions), who were on the right and 18 guns of ours were amongst them, and sent them to the right about in half an hour, with the loss of about 1,500 killed, wounded and prisoners, well, Lord Raglan was much pleased, and thought like an old ass as he is (mind this is now the opinion of the whole army) that after this dressing they would not attack the position again, although it is our weak point. The Engineers, however, advised his strengthening it by heavy guns and some earth works, but he being in his second childhood said "Nonsense, they will not dare to come again".
January 29th 1855
We are going on much the same as usual, the weather has been the last week much milder, the snow has nearly disappeared, but the thaw has made the Camp like a very wet and deep ploughed field, at any rate this is better than the intense cold we have had lately. We are now reduced to 9,500 effective bayonets, inclusive of 3,000 at Balaklava under Sir Colin Campbell. It really makes one laugh to see the nonsense they put in the papers, about our now having 30,000 men etc., with every comfort, etc., etc.
I received a letter from Aunt (tell her I will answer it by next mail), by last Mail, in which she says the people are enraged at the falsehoods the Times tells about things out here. I can assure you that it is true every word of it, and that they do not state one half of the miseries going on here. There is a general feeling of dislike and hatred growing up rapidly in the Army against Lord Raglan, from his want of foresight, and total neglect of the officers, men and Horses. No doubt people will try to excuse him by saying he has not this, or that and has great difficulties to contend with. We allow all this, but still we who are here, see and know of fifty things he might have done with the greatest ease, if he had chosen, in Hutting, feeding, defences, visiting the sick, etc., etc., but not a thing has he done, is hardly ever seen, and if anyone proposes a measure to him he only pooh,pooh! and says impossible.
Source: http://victorianweb.org/history/crimea/richards/richardsov.html

1. PRIMARY SOURCE: Poem: “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (first published in The Examiner, December 9, 1854)
   

1. What is the historical significance of William Russell’s reporting the events of the Crimean War in the Times of London? 
2. How does Russell’s description of the charge of the Light Brigade compare with its portrayals in the poem (1855) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson or the film (1968)?
3. What are Captain Richard’s impressions of Lord Raglan in the letters written to his mother?  How does the film portray Lord Raglan?
4. Why was the war’s coverage in the Times (London) important to Florence Nightingale’s nursing activities?  What role did disease play in the war?
5. Why were new technologies including the telegraph and photography significant in connection with the Crimean War?

Source: http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/ryost/hist201/Nationalism/CrimeanWarSources.doc

Web site to visit: http://faculty.kirkwood.edu

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Crimean War

 

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Crimean War