Crimean War

The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the "Eastern question" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.

The war's proximate cause was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854. The Russian advance was halted at Silistria in June.

In September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed in Crimea in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. They scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the 11-month Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853–1855), the White Sea (July–August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854–1855). The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont entered on the allies' side in 1855.

Sevastopol ultimately fell after a renewed French assault on the Malakoff redoubt in September 1855. Diplomatically isolated and facing the prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed the development due to the conflict's domestic unpopularity. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.

The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways, and telegraphs. It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly symbolized logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalization of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.

The Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury, and undermined its influence in Europe. The defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems. It became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the emancipation reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom in Russia, and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education, and military service.

As the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:

In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War.