![]() The Battle of Balaclava opened shortly after 5:00am on this day in 1854, when a squadron of Russian Cossack Cavalry advanced under cover of darkness. Russian diplomat Pyotr Petrovich Troubetzkoy would write: “ Few wars in history reveal greater confusion of purpose or richer unintended consequences than the Crimean War.” The loss of life in the Crimean War (October 1853 to February 1856) was prodigious, resulting in the death of some 750,000 military service personnel on all sides, and unknown numbers of civilians. War broke out in the Crimea in October 1853, between an allied coalition of forces including the Ottoman Empire, France, Great Britain and Sardinia, against the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas I. Great Britain attempted to mediate the growing Franco-Russian dispute, but neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III, would back down. ![]() ![]() The key to the main door, of the Church of the Nativity. Things came to a head in 1852 with, among other disputes, an argument over a key. This state of affairs was challenged in the mid-19th century by the French Empire of Emperor Napoleon III, who was trying to extend Latin (Catholic) influence over the region. The Greek clergy in the Christian Holy Land already enjoyed warm relations with their Ottoman overlords, and controlled most of the Christian holy sites. 1896 Punch cartoon lampoons a hapless Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in front of a poster announcing the reorganization of the Ottoman EmpireĪt the height of its power during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in the world, ruling over 39 million subjects and controlling a territory spanning three continents: over two million square miles.īy the mid-19th century, the once-great Empire was the “sick man of Europe”, destined to be broken apart by its adversaries, in the wake of World War 1.įor a hundred years or more, the Russian Empire had seen itself as protector of Orthodox Church co-religionists, in the biblical land of Israel and historical Palestine.
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