The problem in the Balkans began with expansionism.
Anxious to extend their empire to the south, and coveting the trade routes that flowed around the Crimea, and convinced of their own moral legitimacy, the Russians attacked. Only a few years later, thousands of Russians were dead or gravely wounded, and the empire’s grip on the eastern Mediterranean was broken, Russian naval power was broken, and involvement by the Western powers in the war made their leadership absolutely miserable.
Perhaps the careful reader will dismiss these words as mere repetition of current events, but sadly this is not the case.
One speaks here of the Crimean War, which raged from 1853 to 1856. That nasty little conflict is one of a great many titanic battles which raged through the territory, raging from the Trojan War, Julius Caesar’s wars on the Pontic Kingdom, the Rus attacks on Constantinople of 860 and again in 907, the conquests of Memet II, Gallipoli, as well as some stuff the reader may have seen in the recent media. Suffice it to say that the shore of the Black Sea is one expensive piece of real estate.
The Russian world view until 1853 was very clear: It was the third Rome and the legitimate heir of that lost empire. The first Rome had been the age of the Roman Republic and Empire. The second Rome was the Byzantine Empire, which emerged out of the old Eastern Roman administration in the fifth century A.D. The Byzantines knew of the famous eagle standard of the caesars, and so their symbol became the double headed eagle. The Byzantine Empire collapsed in the Turkish invasion of 1453, but not before one of the last imperial princesses, Sophia Palaiologina, was married to the Grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III. Ivan took the title of czar, or caesar, from his bride’s family and the double-headed eagle as his own. It is proudly shown in Moscow to this very day.
The Russian state also adopted its religion from the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Church. Like the Byzantine emperors before them, the czars controlled the church and took it as their personal mission to be the protector of all Orthodox Christians, wherever they may be. They were particularly interested in the city of Constantinople, or modern Istanbul, and the Holy Land, which was always a site for Russian pilgrims. The Romanov dynasty saw their mission as a holy one, where Russian nationalism and the Orthodox faith worked together for the good of all. Religious minorities, such as the Jews, who did not share this vision, faced difficulties.
By 1853, the Turkish Ottoman Empire was in decline but still held a number of Christian territories in the Balkans. But when Russian Orthodox pilgrims complained about harassment from Turkish authorities, Czar Nicholas I demanded that the Ottomans recognize his sole right to be the protector of all Orthodox Christians. The Ottomans saw this as an intrusion into their sovereignty and war was declared.
In the beginning of the war, it appeared that Russia would win. Russia invaded the Balkans and won several victories, including the destruction of the wooden Ottoman fleet. Afraid of the Russian expansion and a Turkish collapse, the British and French governments allied themselves with the Turks and sent their military forces into the Black Sea. The commanders resolved to strike at Sevastopol, in what is now officially Ukraine, although the modern Russians annexed it in 2014. But in 1853, on the peninsula to the south of Sevastopol, both sides dug in for a long series of battles and a siege. All told, there would be over 14 different major battles.
The Crimean War is noted for several things, the most obvious of which was the incompetence of the officers on both sides. The most famous blunders, among many, was the Charge of the Right Brigade, immortalized in Tennyson’s poem. This was written to make glorious an idiotic decision to send one Lord Cardigan on a cavalry charge into the Battle of Balaclava in October 1854, where they were surrounded by Russian artillery on three sides. Tennyson tells us:
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!’ he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
Disease was rampant on both sides, although this led to the development of the first modern nursing corps by Florence Nightingale. It was also the first war which was reported with modern photography, so the people at home could see what was actually going on, opening a whole new debate on media coverage of military matters. It was also the first use of telegraphs in war as well as the first use of steel in shell casings and the hulls of naval vessels. One can see the long shadow of World War I in the agonies of Crimea.
When the allies finally seized Sevastopol after an 11-month siege, they found nothing but scorched ruins behind the Russian retreat. Both sides agreed to talks and the war soon ended. But what had been accomplished? Russia lost huge prestige and any hope of being the Orthodox protectors. France, Britain and Turkey had only piles of bodies for all their trouble. The Crimea and a number of other sites not mentioned here were left in ruins.
The Roman poet Virgil once described the flight of the Trojans from doomed Troy, near the shores of the Black Sea. When the hero Aeneas landed in North Africa, he found a mural depicting the horrors of his war, and he said to his associate, “What place is there, Achates, what region of earth not full of our hardships?” We might reply to Aeneas, “Sir, your sufferings in the east are very well known, if only because they keep happening again and again and again.”