The Crimean War

The battle of the Alma

The Caucasus

The battle of Balaklava

The battle of Inkerman

The siege of Sevastopol

Acknowledgements

The research for this book took place over many years and thanks are due to a large number of people.

In the early stages of research Helen Rappaport helped me to compile a working bibliography from the potentially endless list of books, published memoirs, diaries and letters by participants in the Crimean War. She also gave invaluable advice on the social history of the war, sharing information from her own research for No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War.

At the National Army Museum in London I am grateful to Alastair Massie, whose own works, The National Army Museum Book of the Crimean War: The Untold Stories and A Most Desperate Undertaking: The British Army in the Crimea, 1854–56, were an inspiration to my own. I gratefully acknowledge the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to make use of the materials from the Royal Archives, and am thankful to Sophie Gordon for her advice on the photographs of the Royal Collection at Windsor. In the Basbanlik Osmanlik Archive in Istanbul, I was helped by Murat Siviloglu and Melek Maksudoglu, and in the Russian State Military History Archive in Moscow by Luisa Khabibulina.

Various people commented on all or sections of the draft – Norman Stone, Sean Brady, Douglas Austin, Tony Margrave, Mike Hinton, Miles Taylor, Dominic Lieven and Mark Mazower – and I am grateful to them all. Douglas Austin and Tony Margrave, in particular, were a mine of information on various military aspects. Thanks are also due to Mara Kozelsky for allowing me to read the typescript of her then unfinished book on the Crimea, to Metin Kunt and Onur Onul for help on Turkish matters, to Edmund Herzig on Armenian affairs, to Lucy Riall for advice on Italy, to Joanna Bourke for her thoughts on military psychology, to Antony Beevor for his help on the hussars, to Ross Belson for background information on the resignation of Sidney Herbert, to Keith Smith for his generous donation of the extraordinary photograph ‘Old Scutari and Modern Uskudar’ by James Robertson, and to Hugh Small, whose book The Crimean War: Queen Victoria’s War with the Russian Tsars made me change my mind on many things.

As always, I am indebted to my family, to my wife, Stephanie, and our daughters, Lydia and Alice, who could never quite believe that I was writing a war book but indulged my interests nonetheless; to my wonderfully supportive agent, Deborah Rogers, and her superb team at Rogers, Coleridge and White, especially Ruth McIntosh, who talks me through my VAT returns, and to Melanie Jackson in New York; to Cecilia Mackay for her thoughtful work on the illustrations; to Elizabeth Stratford for the copy-editing; to Alan Gilliland for the excellent maps; and above all to my two great editors, Simon Winder at Penguin and Sara Bershtel at Metropolitan.

Note on Dates and Proper Names

DATES

From 1700 until 1918 Russia adhered to the Julian calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar in use in Western Europe. To avoid confusion, all dates in this book are given according to the Gregorian calendar.

PROPER NAMES

Russian names are spelled in this book according to the standard (Library of Congress) system of transliteration, but common English spellings of well-known Russian names (Tsar Alexander, for example) are retained.

ALSO BY ORLANDO FIGES

Peasant Russia, Civil War:

The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917 – 1921

A People’s Tragedy:

The Russian Revolution, 1891 – 1924

Interpreting the Russian Revolution:

The Language and Symbols of 1917

(with Boris Kolonitskii)

Natasha’s Dance:

A Cultural History of Russia

The Whisperers:

Private Life in Stalin’s Russia

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

 AN Archives nationales, ParisBLMD British Library Manuscripts Division, LondonBLO Bodleian Library Special Collections, OxfordBOA Basbakanlik Osmanlik Archive, IstanbulFO National Archive, London, Foreign OfficeGARF State Archive of the Russian Federation, MoscowIRL Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, St PetersburgNAM National Army Museum, LondonRA Royal Archives, WindsorRGADA Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, MoscowRGAVMF Russian State Archive of the Military Naval Fleet, St PetersburgRGB Russian State Library, Manuscripts Division, St PetersburgRGIA Russian State Historical Archive, St PetersburgRGVIA Russian State Military History Archive, MoscowSHD Service historique de la Defense, VincennesWO National Archive, London, War Office

INTRODUCTION