The Crimean War полностью

The Crimean campaign was not only wrongly conceived but also badly planned and prepared. The decision to invade the Crimea was taken without any real intelligence. The allied commanders had no maps of the region. They took their information from outdated travelogues, such as Lord de Ros’s diary of his Crimean travels and Major-General Alexander Macintosh’s Journal of the Crimea, both dating back to 1835, which led them to believe that the Crimean winters were extremely mild, even though there were more recent books that pointed out the cold, such as The Russian Shores of the Black Sea in the Autumn of 1852 by Laurence Oliphant, which was published in 1853. The result was that no winter clothing or accommodation was prepared, partly on the hopeful assumption that it would be a brief campaign and that victory would be achieved before any frost set in. They had no idea how many Russian troops were in the Crimea (estimates ranged between 45,000 and 80,000 men), and no idea where they were located on the peninsula. The allied fleets could transport only 60,000 of the 90,000 troops at Varna to the Crimea – on the most optimistic calculation less than half the three-to-one ratio recommended by military textbooks for a siege – and even that would have to be at the expense of ambulance wagons, draught animals and other essential supplies. The allies suspected that the Russian troops retreating from the Danubian front were going to be brought to the Crimea, and that the best outcome for them would be the seizure of Sevastopol by a lightning coup de main and the destruction of its military facilities and the Black Sea Fleet before they arrived. They reasoned that a less successful attack on Sevastopol would very probably require the occupation of Perekop, the isthmus separating the Crimea from the mainland, to block those Russian reinforcements and supplies. In his dispatch of 29 June, Newcastle had ordered Raglan to carry out this task ‘without delay’. But Raglan refused to carry out the order, claiming that his troops would suffer in the heat of the Crimean plain.⁴⁷

As the launching of the invasion approached, military leaders got cold feet. The French, in particular, had their doubts. Newcastle’s instructions to Raglan were copied by Marshal Vaillant, the Minister of War, to Saint-Arnaud, but the commander of the French forces was sceptical about the plan. His reservations were shared by the majority of his officers, who thought the attack would benefit Britain as a naval power more than France. But such doubts were brushed aside, as pressure was applied by the politicians in London and Paris, eager for an offensive to satisfy the public mood, and increasingly concerned to get the troops away from the cholera-infested Varna zone. By late August Saint-Arnaud had come to the conclusion that fewer men would be lost in an attack on Sevastopol than had died already from cholera.⁴⁸

The embarkation order came as a relief to most of the troops, who ‘preferred to fight like men rather than waste away from hunger and disease’, according to Herbé. ‘The men and officers are getting daily more disgusted with their fate,’ wrote Robert Portal, a British cavalry officer, in late August.

They do nothing but bury their comrades. They say loudly that they have not been brought out to fight, but to waste away and die in this country of cholera and fever … . We hear that there is a mutiny in the French encampment, the soldiers swearing that they will go anywhere and do anything, but remain here to die they will not.

Rumours of a mutiny in the French camp were confirmed by Colonel Rose, attached to the French staff, who reported to London on 6 September that the French command did ‘not think well of the stability and power of resistance of the French soldiers’.⁴⁹