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Consequences of the Crimean War - Coggle Diagram
Consequences of the Crimean War
PUBLIC OUTRAGE
The “Charge of the Light Brigade” demonstrates how the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement.
Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the Army.
CONSEQUENCES FOR RUSSIA
THEY LOST
The Treaty of Paris punished defeated Russia, but in the long run,
Austria
lost the most from the war despite having barely taken part in it.
Continued to be tension for years later in this region… EVEN today.
This tension was partly a cause of World War One.
Russia felt they should modernise their society afterwards.
Short Term Consequences
THE ALLIES WON BUT AT A HUMAN COST
Casualties –
TOTAL ALLIED CASSUALTIES 140,000
TOTAL RUSSIAN CASSUALTIES 110,000
Allied Victory - The Russians retreated from Sevastopol and Treaty of Paris agreed peace terms – largely a return to how things had been before the war with the Baltic being a neutral zone.
Changes in how war was reported
THE PRESS
Newspaper coverage of the war, ensured that the public was able to read about the reality of warfare.
The Times reporter William Howard Russell was very good at exposing problems with the army.
He exposed the incompetence of many of the
It was Thomas Chenery another Times reporter who was the first to report the dreadful conditions at Scutari.
The Times led the attack on Raglan and the army’s aristocratic and privileged leadership in general.
It led to an attack on Lord Aberdeen and his downfall and replacement by Lord Palmerston as Prime Minister.
There was NO press censorship.
Illustrated London News sent several artists to the Crimea to sketch events and these were featured.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Fenton went to the Crimea in February 1855 as the first official war photographer on the insistence of Prince Albert. It was hoped that the photographs might counteract the anti-war reporting of the Times.
Fenton carried his bulky equipment in a converted wine wagon. The equipment was SO basic he was unable to take active shots.
350 photos were either carefully posed pictures of men or images of the landscape.
Fenton showed no scenes of actual death
BUT his letters and diary reveal that he saw plenty of evidence of the horrors of war.
On one occasion he came across the body of a dead Russian ‘lying as if he had raised himself upon his elbow, the bare skull sticking up with still enough flesh left in the muscles to prevent it falling from the shoulders’.
On his return from the Crimea his photographs were displayed in a London gallery.
ARMY REFORM
During the Crimean War, army affairs commanded public and parliamentary interest.
There were huge criticisms over transport, provisioning and hospital care. Nightingale kept campaignaing to improve soldiers’ health well after the war.
Finally some changes were brought in from 1856 – 1874
A Staff College at Camberley to improve officers’ training.
Army had generally the best available weapons (but hardly any difference because wars were colonial where they easily outgunned the locals!)
In 1868 Edward Cardwell the secretary of state for war tried to improve things further including abolishing the way officers bought their commissions.
DEVELOPMENTS IN NURSING
NIGHTINGALE
In 1860 she set up the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, 1860.
She was an inspiration for women and encouraged many to devote their lives to nursing in a world where women didn’t have many rights.
NB she opposed women’s suffrage (right to vote)
The Covid EXCELL Nightingale Hospital was opened in 2019.
SEACOLE
Mixed views of her
One said ‘She made many more officers drunk’.
Another said she was ‘warm and successful physicaian’ and ‘always in attendance in the battlefield’.
In 1856 Seacole returned to Britain in poor health and bankrupt.
The press helped to tell of her plight. A Testimonial Fund was set up for her to help provide for her.
She is generally praised today for her achievements in overcoming the racial and gender prejudices in Victorian Society.
Nightingale did much more for actual nursing in long term and is better known.
Michael Gove wanted her removed from the National Curriculum in 2013.
Her statue wasn’t unveiled until 2016 and it caused much controversy!
Some still complain she wasn’t truly a nurse.
