City of Countless Names- The Crimean War

The War So Far…

As the Ottoman Empire waned, the Russian Empire grew, pulling the carefully maintained balance of power off kilter. The Great Powers of Europe worriedly watched, pondering “the Eastern Question” of whether or not and how to prop up the failing Ottoman Empire against the Empire of Russia. Russia’s Czarina coveted the trading power of the Bosporus strait, and badly needed to secure her empire’s southern border. If her forces could take Constantinople, Russia would own the Bosporus Strait, connecting their Empire with the Mediterranean and the Danube, two critically important waterways. The Czarina just needed a reason for war.

As a diplomatic courtesy, the Ottoman Empire gave the Roman Aluminat Church authority over the churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the other Aluminat pilgrimage sites of their empire, and in 1740 they let Roman Aluminat monks protect the sites.  By the 1840s, the number of Russian pilgrims traveling in the Holy Land gave the Czarina the excuse she needed to challenge the Sultan’s authority. As the head of the Russian Aluminat Church, she demanded the right to protect her subjects in the Ottoman Empire.

Hoping to ingratiate his rule among his Roman Aluminat subjects, the Emperor of France challenged the demands of the Czarina. The threat of Russia’s empire extending into the Mediterranean and cutting off it’s over land connection with the Indian colonies spurred England into a military alliance with its traditional enemy, France. In the ensuing political chaos France, Britain, and Russia sent martial forces to the Black sea in anticipation of war.

In July of 1853, Russian forces seized Ottoman territory, the Danubian Principalities, leading to a declaration of war from the invaded Ottoman Empire. After a year of attempted diplomacy, France declared war on Russia on March 27, and England followed one day later. Their allied armies invaded the Crimean Peninsula in September ‘54. Since then, both sides lost thousands of young men in a series of battles and skirmishes with too few victories. Mismanagement and incompetence seems to kill more soldiers through disease, and starvation than the enemy. Since October of ’54, the advances of both sides ground to a halt around the Siege of Sevastopol, a strategic port town.

 

Hoping to gain prestige with France, the Kingdom of Sardinia joined the war in January ‘55, sending 18,000 troops to the Crimea. January also brought changes to the British government. Public opinion turned against the badly mismanaged war effort. Riots, protests, and parliament’s demands for accountability ushered in a new government lead by its Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. Only time will tell if fresh allies and leadership can bring an end to this war of attrition.

The War in Constantinople

Despite the over 300 miles separating Constantinople and the battles in the Crimea peninsula, even the most ignorant traveler sees signs of war all over the city:

-Ships of the English and Ottoman navies choke the Golden Horn. Men-of-War dock along the shore and fire salutes to the departing flotillas full of soldiers headed for battle. Ships damaged from naval skirmishes and storms on the Black Sea limp back to Constantinople. Every available shipwright and carpenter earns their wages scrambling over broken hulls and repairing toppled masts.

-European officers fill every available room in the hotels of Pera, while their soldiers and sailors spend their money in Galata’s dives on alcohol, women, and fraudulent magical charms. Most of the soldiers and officers in Constantinople belonging to European Armies are convalescing after a stay in an army hospital.  Some can barely walk, or feed themselves, while others determinedly ignore their doctor’s order of bed rest.

-In the bazaars, looters sell spoils scavenged on the battlefield from the bodies of dead soldiers. Their stalls openly display the wares of the war dead, such as signet rings, boots, spurs, medals, pistols, snuff boxes, and knives available for any interested party to purchase.

-The English army practically took over Scutari on the Asian shore. Soldiers, gathered in barracks or in houses with their loved ones, await orders to deploy. Much like French hospitals in Pera, soldiers suffering from dysentery, war wounds, and frostbite overcrowd the English hospitals in Scutari. Outbreaks of typhus and cholera in the wards add more bodies to the nearby English cemetery. In the barrack’s hospital, the famous Florence Nightingale and her team of nurses tend to the soldiers in their care and support the hospital’s overworked doctors. Sometimes the hospitals are full, so ships bearing the wounded must take their suffering passengers all the way to the British Hospitals in Malta for treatment.

-Constantinople’s diverse population and its connections to continental trade routes created a perfect hive of spies. In the midst of a continental war, the great nations value secrecy and security more than ever. Many followers of the Eastern Aluminat Faith, such as the Greeks and Bulgarians, sympathize with the Russians, and a few keep their eyes and ears open for helpful information. The Ottoman government closed the Russian Embassy, but certain charities started by the Russian Aluminat church still help those in need.

-The military authorities in Constantinople don’t just worry about Russia, but each other as well. Many Englishmen worry France entered the war as a stepping stone to an empire in the Middle East, and consider their alliance with France “unnatural”. Others feel the same way about siding with the Ottomans against another Aluminat country.

-The Ottoman Empire supplements their armies with mercenaries called “Bashi-Bazouks”. The name means “crazy head” or “free head”, and the name fits the ill-disciplined and treacherous mercenaries. Some previously lived as bandits in the hills of Constantinople, and continue to rob and murder until they leave for the Crimea. Not all are Turkish and not all are criminals. Bashi-Bazouks come from all over the empire and beyond. One highly-decorated Bash-Bazouk major, Nessim Bey, was born Washington Carroll Tevis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.