Page 235 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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the British heavy cavalry attacked the center of the Russian detachments and both sides
were inflicted great casualties. The Russians withdrew to the bastions they had occupied.
Then the commander-in-chief of the British troops Raglan ordered General Lucan, the
commander of the British Light Brigade, to prevent the Russians from drawing back the
22*
artillery at the bastions. Having misinterpreted this order , Lucan had his brigade attack
the Russian artillery, which was a grave mistake leading to a bitter toll. 23
Then the Allies decided to besiege Sevastopol, following the Inkerman Battle starting
24
with the Russian attack on November 05. The British General Raglan, who began to
think about Stratford Canning’s (British Ambassador to Istanbul) proposal for making
an agreement with the Ottomans for a surplus of 20 thousand troops, wrote in his letter
to the Minister of War in London that they needed 10 thousands people more. 25
In February 1855, a British-Ottoman treaty was signed to this end. Still, the soldiers,
having assembled in Sumnu, could hardly arrive in the battlefield towards the end of
summer. The available Ottoman strength under the command of Omer Lutfi Pasha
defended Gozleve, an harbor in the north of Alma river, and frustrated the Russian
26
attempt to capture the city. This battle was written in history as the one that was won in
Crimea only with the participation of Turkish forces.
Having received the news of the Gozleve defeat, Tsar Nicholas I died in March
1855 and was succeeded by Alexander II. Trying to take advantage of this situation, the
Austrian government proposed to convene a conference in Vienna in order to end this
war between Russia and the Allies, which was later accepted by the belligerent parties.
During these negotiations, which lasted for approximately two and a half months,
the parties could not come to an agreement on the confinement of the Russian Black
27
Sea fleet. As the negotiations were prolonged, the British Minister of Interior Lord
Palmerston became more resolute to hamper the peace initiative and start a large-scale
skirmish. Still, the final decision for either war or peace depended on the attitude of the
hesitant French emperor Napoleon III. In the end, the plans of peace were turned down
and after a short period, Napoleon involuntarily adopted the British alliance and the

22 The charge of the light brigade is still not understood clearly by the British war historians. Some historians,
depending on the report sent to London by Lord Raglan on October 28, hold that General Lucan mistook the
order; while some others defend that Raglan gave a wrong order.
23 Fuat Andıç-Süphan Andıç, p.35. The saying of the French Army general, who watched closely the battle,
about the charge of the British light brigade, stating ‘It’s magnificient, but it’s not war [C’est magnifique,mais
ce n’est pas la guerre]’ would mark a stamp on the history. Moreover, the poem ‘The Charge of the Light
Brigade’, which Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote after he received the news on the attack in London, would
deeply affect the British people. However, in a documentary on this war including four episodes, which was
broadcast on the British TV Channel 5 in the autumn of 2003, it was explained that those who died in the
Battle of Balaklava, which was asserted to have cost the lives of 600 British soldiers, were in fact Turkish
soldiers, and that Britain put forth such a statement in order to gain public support. See, Murat Bardakçı,
Hürriyet Daily, 02.11.2003.
24 1853-1856 Osmanlı-Rus ve Kırım Savaşı Deniz Harekâtı, Gnkur. Harp Tarihi Baskanligi Yayinlari, Ankara,
1977, pp. 70-75.
25 Alan Palmer, p.130.
26 Virginia H. Aksan, Istanbul, 2011, pp. 484-490.
27 1853-1856 Osmanlı-Rus ve Kırım Savaşı Deniz Harekatı, pp. 81-82.