The Crimean War: The Story Behind the Myth

The Crimean War was significant event of the time. The battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the siege of Sevastopol, Florence Nightingale at Scutari with her lamp are all charged with memory. To contemporaries, it was not the Crimean War but 'The Great War with Russia'. A mere thirty years after the Great Napoleonic War, France and Britain were actually on the same side, along with the Ottoman Empire, widely seen as an infidel, corrupt Islamic power. Ponting takes aim at these 'lieux de mémoire' and attempts to view them in the cold light of what actually happened: the army was run by incompetent aristocrats, the 'slanted' reports of William Russell of The Times, the first war correspondent, and the eye-witness accounts of Leo Tolstoy, who was caught up in the action while visiting his brother, and of some of the rank and file soldiers.