The Feeding Ground
Journal: Oxford University Press eBooks
Year: 2018

In 1848, fewer than 650,000 people lived in Crimea and the larger province of Tauride. Seven years later, with the onset of war, the population of the peninsula swelled with an additional 300,000 soldiers and 100,000 horses. When the military supply chain collapsed in the fall of 1854, the military turned to Crimea and the surrounding region. Starving soldiers even ate work horses and oxen, further impeding delivery of new supplies from the interior. The result was an immediate subsistence crisi