Crimean War ends

Having dispatched Napoleon at Waterloo, a Europe exhausted militarily and financially settled down for a relatively stable and conflict-free three decades. Territorial ambitions were for the moment sublimated under the desire to just maintain the status quo. But to the east, Russia had other ideas. Bordering a weakened Ottoman Empire, Russia seized its chance to expand into the land of “the sick man of Europe.” Tsar Nicholas I invaded, claiming control of strategic waterways, and offering Austrian and Britain land grants of their own if they ally with him. The European countries, motivated more by the desire to keep Russia away from vital trade routes, chose to side with the Turks.

On this day, March 30, in 1856, after a three year-long war for the control of the Crimean Peninsula, and with allied forces poised to strike at the capital, St. Petersburg, Russia finally accepted defeat and signed the Treaty of Paris. It was a bitter pill to swallow for the Tsar: he had to accept demilitarlization of the Black Sea, separating Russia from Turkey, as well as the independence of several of the Balkan states.

The most famous moment of the war came in 1854, in the Battle of Baclavia, near the Russian fort city of Sevastopol. A British light cavalry unit was given orders to seize a detachment of Russian guns in the front. A miscommunication led them to attack the wrong detachment – instead of going towards the water, the horsemen galloped across a valley to the Russian front lines, facing withering fire on both sides. The “Charge of the Light Brigade,” famously described in the poem by Alfred Loyd Tennyson, accomplished little militarily, but was said to impress the Russians enough so they never again dared face the English in open battle.