The Crimean War: Every Day

See how an allied coalition of Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire defeated the Russians during a costly war.

Information Credits:
- Badem, Candan, ed. The Routledge Handbook of the Crimean War. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
- Badem, Candan. The Ottoman Crimean War (1853-1856). Leiden: Brill, 2010.
- Kofas, Jon V. International and Domestic Politics in Greece during the Crimean War. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980.
- Reid, James J. Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse 1839-1878. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000.
- Wikipedia

Music used:
Despair and Triumph by Kevin MacLeod

[theelite]

1:26 Austria neutrally invades 2 countries

[nicolasheredia]

Russia and the Ottomans: *Fighting for Walachia and Moldavia*

Austria: *IS FREE REAL STATE*

[iklone]

Its surprisingly how little the battlelines changed for such a large-scale war as this. I suppose it was very much a tactician's war on both sides

[DanTheYoutubeAddict]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't the capital of the Ottoman Empire be Constantinople? I think that it was changed to Istanbul after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918/19 as a symbol of the new nation of Turkey being a completely separate entity from the old empire. I may be wrong on this because it has never been entirely clear to me when this happened, but this is definitely me being unnecessarily detail oriented.

[FederationMapping]

Thank you for showing the Greek revolutionaries as well

[florinivan]

One problem for Russia during the war was the fear of an all out assault from France/UK. Maybe if they somehow got Prussia to join. So about half their army was stuck in reserve waiting for a possible invasion. Had they concentrated their full force in the Black Sea the war would have been very different.

[osman_gultekin]

So, the British-French operations are well known especially thoose in Crimea, and here is the less known part in which Turks were all by themselves againist Russians:

The war started on 5th October 1853, and on 30th November, the Russian fleet managed to destroy an Ottoman naval squad in the port of Sinop, which prevented Turks from efficiently supplying their forces in Eastern Anatolia. In this region, Russians managed to defeat numerically superior Turkish army in several battles, and invaded Kars, Ardahan and Artvin provinces. As war slowly turned to allied tide, Russians were repelled by experienced Ottoman commander Omar Pasha in early 1855 and there was a status quo in east for the rest of the war.

Meanwhile in Balkans, there were no allied forces present than thoose of the Ottoman Empire until mid 1854, and from the time of wars beginning to this date, Turks fought Russians in a 1v1 aswell. First notable actions were battles of Dobrich and Silistra, which held for a long time and dealt high casualities on the Russian army, which suffered disorganization from the break out attempts by the Turks, commanders often had to regroup kilometers behind the frontline. By the end of the Siege of Silistra, Allied forces had begun transferring to Varna, and Omar Pasha was advancing into Russian-occupied Wallachia. Two armies made several contacts with eachother - notable battles being Calafat anf Oltenitsa- and modernized Ottoman army managed to repell and counterattack the Russian armies to Targoviste, reconquering Bucharest (some citings claim that they were welcomed by cheering of the locals) which led to an Austrian intervention to control both Romanian principalities until end of the war.

The reason I wrote this, is the popular belief that Turks could only manage to defeat Russians with help from Europe. The army officers were considerably skilled after gratutading from the schools Mahmud II had established, and reorganization of the said army and officer corps gave Turks flexibility advantages, which helped them together with discipline. Turkish successes were shadowed by thoose of allies in Crimea, and smaller sized defeats in East Anatolia. The empire was not yet a sick man, and did well on its own part during the war.

[kaiserwilhelmii]

My grandfather is making a collection of the family history and we found a letters from a relative that fought in this war and died during the siege of Sevastapol

[SelfRaisingWheat]

This war had an important impact on the history of Ethiopia. Emperor Teeodros II at this time was sending bucket loads of letters to Queen Victoria asking for a Christian alliance against the "Muslim Turks" (which for Tewodros included rapidly encroaching Egypt). When he learnt of the Crimean war and that Britain's policy was completely opposite (helping the Turks attack a Christian nation), Tewodros then kidnapped some British envoys and went to Magdala. Britain responded to this by sending an expedition to free the envoys and punish Tewodros (Abyssinian Expedition). The emperor realised his blunder and ended his own life amidst the hopeless situation.

[BoomWarzone]

The amount of people that are confusing this for the 2014 crimean conflict is just insane

[hitmanmapping_]

Greek rebellion is also known as "Epirus Revolt of 1854". Of course, there were Greek revolts in Thessaly and Macedonia as well.

[_ZHONG_XIN_NA_]

an interesting fact: a few years after the end of this war, the Russian Empire approved the black-yellow-white flag as the official one, popularly known as the "imperial". With this flag, Russia has not lost a single war.

[kollo]

5/6 of all Russian forces and peasant militias (like those in the 1812 invasion) were on the western borders preparing to defend against an Austrian, Prussian, and/or Swedish invasion and uprisings by Poles.

[auridisavan]

I wonder how many people are gonna click this thinking it's about the Russo-Ukranian War

[crunchmcm]

Not to be confused with the Crimean war in 2014.
This was a war fought around Crimea from 1853-1856, and the next Crimean war was in 2014, but this is focused on the first crimean war, not the second.

[bobbyb]

Well I’ve learnt something new today- Greek rebels and Sardinia were involved in the Crimean War!

[haydenmartin]

Paris seems to be a vary populer place to make treatys lol

[HD-npeb]

In this war everyone talking Allie Crimea landing but defend of Ottomans in Balkans far more succesful

[gb]

Why was the Turkish city of Sinop highlighted here? Did anything happen there between Russians and Ottomans?

[junesilvermanb]

WAR is the Child of GREED and PRIDE...