The National Army Museum Book Of The Crimean War

This book is based on unpublished material, from single letters by barely literate private soldiers to the voluminous correspondence of commander-in-chief Lord Raglan. The whole experience of fighting in the Crimea is captured here: the thrill of combat, the men's impressions of their allies--French, Turkish and Sardinian--the horrors of their first winter in the Crimea, the scandalously inadequate medical arrangements and the impact made by Florence Nightingale. Written by a leading authority in this field, this is a colorful, fresh account of one of nineteenth century's most famous conflicts.

Chloroform, telegraphy, steamships and rifles were distinctly modern features of the Crimean War. Covered by a large corps of reporters, illustrators and cameramen, it also became the first media war in history. For the benefit of the ubiquitous artists and correspondents, both the domestic events were carefully staged, giving the Crimean War an aesthetically alluring, even spectacular character. With their exclusive focus on written sources, historians have consistently overlooked this visual dimension of the Crimean War. Photo-historian Ulrich Keller challenges the traditional literary bias by drawing on a wealth of pictorial materials from scientific diagrams to photographs, press illustration and academic painting. The result is a new and different historical account which emphasizes the careful aesthetic scripting of the war for popular mass consumption at home.

This is a study of the British military intelligence operations during the Crimean War. It details the beginnings of the intelligence operations as a result of the British Commander, Lord Raglan's, need for information on the enemy, and traces the subsequent development of the system.

On 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War, there took place probably the most memorable episode in the story of the British Army - the Charge of the Light Brigade. Ever since, when people argue over the cause of the disaster, one name recurs: that of Captain Louis Edward Nolan. What could he have possibly been thinking as he delivered the order which set the Light Brigade charging in the wrong direction? Unfortunately, Nolan was killed minutes later and therefore in no position to explain himself, but now, for the first time, with the publication in full of his campaign journal, everyone can discover what, in the previous few weeks, he had actually been thinking.

Volume 1: Turkish Army uniforms in the Crimean War Period, and Volume 2, which covers the Turkish Navy, the Contingents, Additional Cavalry Units and the Romanian Army, both acknowledge as its key source of information, the research by Charles A. Norman, a well-known British military artist and researcher. Norman’s work transliterated original observations, illustrations and notes made by two Crimean War Commentators: Joseph-Emile Vanson, and Constantin Guys. Constantin Guys was a reporter, and illustrator for The Illustrated London News, and in 1854 was assigned to the Crimea to produce drawings of wartime scenes which could be turned into engravings for news. Constantin Guys documented various Turkish uniforms, with his description of each scene, written in English on the back of the drawing or below it. The approach taken in this volume has been to overlay Norman’s original interpretations, combining this with other period written descriptions, illustrations, paintings, and photographs taken at the time, hopefully getting a closer interpretation of the Turkish Army uniforms seen in the Crimea. Many of the library and museum collections provide a significant amount of information. However, much of this is not accurately dated. The dating of these often slip by two or three years, and up to a decade earlier or later. The illustrations presented in both volumes are based on this combination of materials.

This series concentrates on women and the soldiers in the ranks whose lives they shared, assembling a wide body of evidence of their romantic entanglements and domestic concerns. The new military history of recent decades has demanded a broadening of the source base beyond elite accounts or those that concentrate solely on battlefield experiences. Armies did not operate in isolation, and men’s family ties influenced the course of events in a variety of ways. Campfollowing women and children occupied a liminal space in campaign life. Those who travelled "on the strength" of the army received rations in return for providing services such as laundry and nursing, but they could also be grouped with prostitutes and condemned as a ‘burden’ by officers. Parents, wives, and offspring left behind at home remained in soldiers’ thoughts, despite an army culture aimed at replacing kin with regimental ties. Soldiers’ families’ suffering, both on the march and back in Britain, attracted public attention at key points in this period as well. This series provides, for the first time in one place, a wide body of texts relating to common soldiers’ personal lives: the women with whom they became involved, their children, and the families who cared for them. It brings hitherto unpublished material into print for the first time, and resurrects accounts that have not been in wide circulation since the nineteenth century. The collection combines the observations of officers, government officials and others with memoirs and letters from men in the ranks, and from the women themselves. It draws extensively on press accounts, especially in the nineteenth century. It also demonstrates the value of using literary depictions alongside the letters, diaries, memoirs and war office papers that form the traditional source base of military historians. This fifth volume covers The Crimean War (1854-56).