Crimean Quagmire
Journal: Oxford University Press eBooks
Year: 2024

Abstract The Crimean War was the greatest international crisis of the Victorian era, and a modern war of rifles, railroads, and telegraphs. As it raged, two writers embedded in the conflict–the young Russian officer Lev Tolstoy, and William Howard Russell, an Irish correspondent for The Times–brought the horrors of trench warfare home to the public for the first time. Crimea transformed how we understand war. Stripping away the romanticism of the Napoleonic era, Tolstoy and Russell exposed gover