Crimean War and Peace

In the collective memory, the Crimean War began as an opéra bouffe. Catholic and Orthodox Christian pilgrims, backed by France and Russia respectively, contested access to the Holy Places within the Ottoman Empire. The fistfights among clerics at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem reflected the jostling of two revolutionary powers bridling under the strictures of the 1815 Vienna settlement. Russia, aggrandized by regular wars of conquest against the Ottoman Empire since Peter the Great, saw the chance to control the Turkish Straits while championing the Ottoman Porte’s Slavic Christian subjects in the Balkans. France’s recently proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III hoped to break the confines of the Vienna settlement and restore his uncle’s vision of French gloire. Dividing the conservative Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia, and Russia could allow France to win prestige and champion the nascent nationalism of Italy, Romania, and Poland. Aloof yet alert, Great Britain feared the revolutionary ambitions of both Russia and France, but Russian encroachment on the Ottoman Empire most threatened its Indian domain.

When Russia demanded a de facto protectorate over the Ottoman Empire and occupied the Sultan’s Danubian provinces in present-day Romania, Britain and France eventually joined the Porte in declaring war. Facing a Franco-British force and a mobilization by neutral Austria on its flank, Russia withdrew from the Danubian Principalities. Unsatisfied, Britain and France persisted in plans to punish Russia by destroying the headquarters of its Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol in Crimea. The target was more than a naval base. Founded by Catherine the Great, Sevastopol symbolized Russia’s successful drive to warm waters and world power, while the Orthodox religion venerated Crimea as the site of Russia’s conversion to Christianity. A strike on Sevastopol would be an attack not only on Russia’s power, but also on its soul.

The allies’ punitive plans misfired. Proposals for a Nelsonian lightning strike evolved into a long siege. Prefatory battles at Alma and Balaklava saw costly allied blunders like the Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalized by Tennyson, even as poorly equipped and untrained Russian peasants suffered disproportionate casualties in frontal assaults on advanced allied riflery. As the campaign season of 1854 concluded, the allied army became a wasting asset on the chilly heights above Sevastopol’s ramparts. Disease was rampant. When Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months in September 1855, it was then the longest siege in military history.

By November 1855, each side had won significant victories. Answering the allied seizure of Sevastopol, the Russians captured the Ottoman fortress at Kars in today’s northeastern Turkey, which guarded the approaches to Anatolia and British India. With Kars, Russia controlled more enemy territory than the allied powers did. The bloodied belligerents had lost well over half a million men in total, largely from disease. Tsar Alexander II, who had succeeded his father that March, ordered peace feelers.

When a military operation depends on a coalition, either for its power or its legitimacy, the major ally with the least expansive war aims can circumscribe the coalition’s goals by withholding further support. Where that ally has sufficient leverage, it can cause the cessation of hostilities. In the Crimean War, British blundering and limited manpower meant that France had won the major victories and sustained the most casualties to take Sevastopol. By November 1855, France had already achieved Napoleon III’s aim of dividing the Holy Alliance – Austria had refused to back Russia, choosing to forget the Tsar’s military assistance during the Hungarian revolution of 1848. Napoleon III’s alliance with Britain had demolished another bulwark of the 1815 settlement. France had nothing further to gain and, from the painful memory of 1812, knew the risks of a long campaign in the vast reaches of Russia. So, the French foreign minister contacted the Russian representative in Paris to explore peace terms.

A period of diplomatic maneuvering among the allies ensued. Britain, France, and Austria had earlier memorialized their war aims in the so-called Four Points:

1. Russian renunciation of its protectorate over Serbia and the Danubian Principalities, which the European powers would guarantee;
2. Freedom of navigation on the Danube;
3. Revision of the Straits Convention of 1841 on navigation through the Dardanelles and Bosporus by warships; and
4. Joint European guarantees of the rights of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

Those aims were insufficient for British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, who had devoted his long career to containing Russia and, by this time, had replaced the conciliatory Lord Aberdeen as Premier. Casting himself as John Bull, Palmerston appealed to the British public to expand the conflict in new theaters. He proposed fomenting nationalist revolts in Russian Finland, the Caucasus, and potentially Poland, while also threatening St. Petersburg with naval operations in the Baltic. However, France and Austria, together presenting London with a fait accompli, eventually won British adherence to a supplemented version of the Four Points. With that support, Austria issued an ultimatum to Russia, threatening to join the war unless the Tsar accepted the expanded Four Points as a basis for negotiation.

Sensing divisions among the allies, the Tsar initially temporized. He soon found himself alone. Sweden reached a military agreement with the alliance, which Prussia also threatened to join. Upstart Piedmont-Sardinia had already sent troops to Crimea, and sclerotic Spain offered its own forces. Russia now risked encirclement abroad and upheaval at home among its subject peoples. The Tsar capitulated, and negotiations to end the war began.

The victory of the allies without escalating the conflict into a general war reflected three factors. First, Russia found itself facing new threats without partners. Even Prussia, which had helped Russia circumvent the allied blockade, had turned against it. This did not mean, however, that Russia was cut off diplomatically; indeed, the belligerents had nearly negotiated a peace based on the Four Points during the winter of 1854-1855, and continued communications allowed the Tsar to quickly come to terms. Second, the Austrian ultimatum represented a credible threat of new force backing the allied peace proposals. Finally, the allies offered relatively moderate peace terms based on clear war aims that culminated in the Paris Treaty of 1856. By its terms, Russia ceded territory in the Danube Delta and Kars to the Ottomans but won recognition of its earlier conquests in the Balkans and Caucasus. The great powers would guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and the rights of its Christian subjects. The Danubian Principalities of present-day Romania won autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty, ending Russia’s claims to protect them. Finally, the Black Sea was demilitarized, with the destruction of the Russian fleet and forts. Austria, Britain, and France formed an alliance to guarantee these terms. The outcome approximated the territorial status quo ante, but with Russian power blunted. As one of the Crimean War’s leading historians has written, Europe avoided World War I, half a century before the Guns of August. The European order remained flexible enough to check aggression without lapsing into excessive punishment.

Today in Ukraine, a Western alliance again confronts Russia. As in November 1855, both sides can claim victories. Ukraine has emerged as a major military power and proved that Russian conventional forces can no longer overrun Europe. Yet despite Ukrainian valor, Russia holds a substantial part of Ukraine’s territory. Like 1855, continuing the war would mean more casualties and, potentially, the risk of escalation with new weapons in new theaters. To end this conflict, the West could follow principles from the conclusion of the Crimean War. Russia should find itself with fewer partners while remaining in contact with the West. A credible and proportionate threat of additional military and economic force should back a moderate peace proposal.

Of course, there are differences between the present conflict and a war that occurred over one hundred fifty years ago. Unlike Britain or France in 1855, NATO is not directly fighting Russian troops on Russian territory. The roles of Austria and Piedmont-Sardinia in the Crimean War presently lack clear analogues in the Ukraine conflict. Most importantly, the Crimean War did not take place in the shadow of nuclear and other advanced weapons.

Nonetheless, we should remember this largely forgotten conflict for its diplomacy. As Ukraine strikes this symbolic and contested region, the Crimean War reminds us of the effectiveness of coercive diplomacy when backed by alliance politics. The threat of additional force and the aggregation of allies, both active and tacit, ended the Crimean War. They can do so again in the present conflict.

Theodore L. Leonhardt served as a research associate to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. A lawyer in New York, he is the co-author of Divine Fire: Groton School and the American Century (Martin & Lawrence Press, 2014).

image: "The valley of the shadow of death" Crimean War photograph. Dirt road in ravine scattered with cannonballs. 27.6 × 34.9 cm (10 7/8 × 13 3/4 in.), salted paper print. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.