Victorian Britain 691Empire in the Balkans began to exert nationalist claims, dreaming of their
own independent states. This challenged the Islamic character that had
existed for centuries as an essential part of the empire.
With interests in Afghanistan, Britain was ill disposed to the expansion of
Russian influence. Increased British trade with the Ottoman Empire had
become another factor in British support for the Turks. Napoleon III of
France, eager for a military victory to solidify support for his regime, also
stood ready to stop Russian expansion by supporting the Ottoman Empire.
The French emperor saw himself as the protector of the Catholic Holy Places
of Judea, which were under Ottoman authority. To placate Catholic support
ers, Napoleon III demanded at least Catholic equality with the Orthodox
religion in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This Russia refused,
demanding the right to veto any changes in the status not only of the Holy
Places but also in the situation of the entire Ottoman Christian population.
The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia in October 1853. Russian
Tsar Nicholas I’s fleet defeated the Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea, setting
fire to the sultan’s wooden ships with incendiary shells. But the tsar’s con
fidence that Britain and France would soon quarrel because of conflicting
interests proved ill founded. With British public opinion eager for the flag
to be shown even after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldavia
and Wallachia, the British Royal Navy sailed into the Black Sea. Not to be
outdone, Napoleon III, too, sent warships.
Britain and France declared war on Russia in March 1854. British and
French forces first moved against the Russian port of Sebastopol on the
peninsula of Crimea on the edge of the Black Sea. Invulnerable to sea
attack, Sebastopol could only be stormed from land. The rusty invading
armies lay siege to Sebastopol. The French army seemed better trained, as
well as better fed and supplied than that of the British. The senior British
commander, a veteran of Waterloo forty years earlier, persisted in referring
to the Russians as “the French.” Most British officers owed their commis
sions to the fact that they were aristocrats, not because of particular com
petence. One commander spent each night on his private yacht anchored
offshore, dining on meals prepared by a French chef while his men shiv
ered in the wind and mud of the Crimean winter and ate ghastly rations.
Far more men died (about 600,000) of disease than in battle, although
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Britain’s poet laureate, helped make famous
the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” in which British cavalry rode into “jaws
of death” at Balaklava. The first war correspondents sent dispatches by tele
graph to eager readers in Britain and France, where interest in the distant
siege dramatically increased newspaper circulation.
Into this maelstrom ventured Florence Nightingale (1820—1910). The
daughter of a prosperous family, she had shocked her parents by becom
ing a nurse, an occupation that had a reputation as providing a refuge for
“disorderly” women. Nightingale volunteered for service in a Constantino
ple hospital after hearing of the appalling conditions endured by the