Crimean War Archives

Orlando Norie captured a grisly moment following the Indian rebellion of 1857-1858. Some mutineers were executed by being tied to cannon and then blown in half.

Crimean War

POW: Art and the Image of The Prisoner

By Peter Harrington

War produces casualties … and captives. Much “war art” concerns itself with the heroics and clash of battle, the sway of forces, and the turns of history. Read more

Bloodied but unbowed, a group of wounded Red Army soldiers awaits evacuation after a grueling battle against strong German forces around the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

Crimean War

Sturgeon Catch 1942: The Siege of Sevastopol

by Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

By late October 1941, the armies of the Third Reich had swept deep into western Soviet Russia. Read more

Crimean War

Into the Valley of Death: The Battle of Balaklava

By Eric Niderost

When Lt. Col. Lord George Paget rose early in the morning of October 25, 1854, he had no inkling of, as he later put it, “the day’s work in store for us.” Read more

Major Burton and officers of the 5th Dragoon Guards.

Crimean War

Roger Fenton, Crimean War Photographer

By Peter Harrington

In the annals of war photography, Roger Fenton stands with Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardener, and James Robertson as one of the pioneering spirits. Read more

Spanish loyalist Federico Borrell Garcia is captured at the moment of his death at Cerro Muriano by photographer Robert Capa on September 5, 1936. Capa’s Falling Soldier remains the most controversial war photo in history.

Crimean War

The Heroism of Vision: Photographs from the Battlefield

By Al Hemingway

On the morning of February 23, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima, a 40-man patrol gathered at the 5th Marine Division headquarters for their final briefing with battalion commander Lt. Read more

Battle of Cerro Gordo by an unknown artist. New Orleans Picayune publisher George Kendall accompanied American troops during the fighting in Mexico.

Crimean War

The Pen & the Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents

By Roy Morris Jr.

Men have been reporting their wars almost as long as they have fighting them. The first prehistoric cave drawings depicted hunters bringing down wild animals, and spoken accounts of battles, large and small, formed the starting point for the oral tradition of history. Read more

An American infantryman training at Fort Belvoir prepares to hurl a pineapple grenade during World War II.

Crimean War

The Modern Grenade: A Brief History

By William McPeak

When did humanity begin throwing explosive devices? What are the origins of the modern grenade, and how did explosives evolve? Read more

A joint English and French naval force launches an assault on the Russian-held port of Petropavlovsk on August 29, 1854. Attacking ships, left right, include Obligado, Virago, Eurydice, and Pique.

Crimean War

Petropavlovsk: The Crimean War’s Forgotten Battle

By Mark N. Lardas

The Crimean War is usually considered a Black Sea conflict, but it actually took place on several frontiers of the Russian empire, including the Baltic and White Seas. Read more

Crimean War

Battle of Camarón: Legendary Last Stand of the French Foreign Legion

By Robert Barr Smith

Near Marseilles, at Aubagne, stands the modern home of the French Foreign Legion. Its spotless grounds include a massive stone pile, the Monument aux Morts, which commemorates the Legion dead of the past 175 years. Read more

The 9th Massachusetts Battery fights a desperate rear-guard action near the Trostle Farm at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. Painting by Don Troiani.

Crimean War

The Model 1857 12-pounder

By Gustav Person

Among the historic inventory of the United States Army’s artillery weapons, few pieces have enjoyed a more predominant role or reputation than the Model 1857 12-pounder gun-howitzer, which became a mainstay of the Federal artillery during the Civil War. Read more

A Union doctor in a straw hat, foreground, examines a soldier’s leg wound while other casualties sprawl on the ground at a field hospital following the Battle of Savage’s Station, Virginia, on June 29, 1862.

Crimean War

Healers or Horrors: Civil War Medicine

By Richard A. Gabriel

Safe behind its ocean barriers, the United States paid scant attention to the wars that raged abroad during the early 19th century, taking little notice of the lessons that might have been learned from the European experience with mass killing. Read more

Three crews were lost during tests of the Horace L. Hunley, shown in a painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.

Crimean War

Evolution of the Submarine

By John Protasio

The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more

Sir Colin Campbell’s 93rd Highland Regiment successfully repulsed a determined Russian cavalry charge early in the battle, thereby preventing the Russians from reaching the port of Balaclava. The expression “Thin Red Line” was a condensed version of the lyrical description of them by war correspondent James Russell.

Crimean War

Immortal Charge of the Light Brigade

By Christopher Miskimon

Six battalions of Russian infantry, 30 cannons, and a cavalry force deployed in the North Valley east of Sevastopol near the town of Balaclava. Read more

Crimean War

Russian Bear’s Rampage

By Robert Heege

It was late in the morning of November 30, 1853, and the Black Sea was living up to its name. Read more

Crimean War

Battle of Alma: First Blood in the Crimea

By Eric Niderost

On the morning of September 14, 1854, an Anglo-French fleet arrived off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. Read more

Crimean War

Frederick Townsend Ward and the Ever— Victorious Army

By Robert Heege

Wu Hsu was having trouble sleeping. As the taotai, or mayor, of Shanghai, Wu was charged with the ultimate welfare of China’s greatest cosmopolitan city. Read more

A company of exhausted and wounded members of the English Coldstream Guards and 20th East Devonshire Regiment stagger down from the heights of Inkerman in this 1877 painting, The Return From Inkerman, by Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler.

Crimean War

Inkerman: The Soldiers’ Battle

By Victor Kamenir

When armed hostilities flared up between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in 1853 over control of holy places in Turkish-ruled Jerusalem, Great Britain was quick to throw its weight behind the Ottomans. Read more

Crimean War

Captain Minié’s Deadly Invention at Inkerman

By Victor Kamenir

The force multiplier that allowed the outnumbered British to stand up to the overwhelming numbers of Russian attackers at Inkerman was the Minié bullet (not ball). Read more

Crimean War

Leo Tolstoy & The Siege of Sevastopol

by Roy Morris Jr.

Of the thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians pinned down by Allied forces during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol, one in particular chafed at the monotonous, mind-numbing routine. Read more

British General Garnet Wolseley was able to steal a march by making intelligent use of war correspondents.

Crimean War

General Garnet Wolseley & The First War Correspondents

by Harold E. Raugh, Jr.

War correspondents are relatively new to history. The Crimean War (1854-1856), pitting Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia against Russia, was the first conflict in which an organized effort was made for civilian correspondents reporting news directly to the civilian population of the home country. Read more

From Around the Network

Three Times’ a Charm: A POW’s Journey From the Philippines to Nagasaki

Spanish Disaster at Rocroi

Sinking Japanese Submarine I-1

Dunkirk: Debacle in the West