Parallels between the Crimean War and modernity are obvious, but we will touch only on some aspects - we are only interested in technological nuances - and we confine ourselves to a brief introduction. As you know, the thunder of Nakhimov guns in the harbor of Sinop responded with the roar of the guns of the enemy who besieged Sevastopol.
Attempts to field the Russian troops to counterattack were repulsed with heavy losses and after the failure of the sycourse to Evpatoria the spirit-poor king on February 15 (27) ordered the heir to write to the commander-in-chief, Prince A. Menshikov, who dismissed him by illness, and in his place appointed P. Gorchakov. The Serene, however, did not wait for the tsar's order. He threw the army, instructing the commander of the Sevastopol troops D. Osten-Saken and sending a request for dismissal for treatment. At Perekop, the prince received a decree appointing Gorchakov and reporting the death of Nicholas I. So the main instigators of the war left the stage.
It clearly showed that the Petrine model of modernization has exhausted itself and Russia has fallen into a chronic stagnation. While she enjoyed the role of the gendarme of Europe, to the place and out of place showing off a heavy fist in which not only the Slavophiles, but also Nadezhdin, Chaadaev and even Pushkin "had a lot of poetry," England and France went far ahead in technological development and fighting Actions showed the complete superiority of European weapons. But it was not just technology. The Russian army was not at all ready for war. Commanders, beginning with the tsar, did not know their business well, the infantry was not trained to operate in loose order and even to shoot at the target, the brilliant cavalry was only suitable for parades, and the fleet, claiming to compete with enlightened navigators, refused to fight at sea. Therefore, the outcome of the war was predetermined and the heroism of soldiers and officers could not save the country from defeat.
Paradoxes of logistics or eh, roads ... It was a gloomy picture of the decline, disorder and backwardness of the disgusting state of roads, the lack of decent communications. Strange, off-road has always been one of the main defensive resources of this boundless country - remember Susanin, the failures of Napoleon and Hitler, but this time played a cruel joke with herself, becoming one of the main reasons for humiliating defeat. By the way, the famous apocryphal phrase about Russia's two main troubles, fools and roads, in addition to Karamzin, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin and others. Sometimes attributed to Nicholas I himself. The pier, for the first time it sounded after reading to them the famous and still burning book of the Marquis de Custine "Russia in 1839": "Bl ... y, but in Russia there are only two woes - fools and bad roads! "- exclaimed the king. If so, then it should be noted that no one else's voices sounded more symbolic ... So, the ways of communication ... The first serious railway in Russia, not a toy Tsarskoye Selo, but of strategic importance, the Nikolaevskaya between Moscow and St. Petersburg, was opened extremely late, Only two years before the Crimean War. Its military importance is emphasized by the fact that the first passengers were two battalions of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Regiments, two squadrons of the Life Guards Cavalry Guards and the Cavalry Regiments and the Guards Artillery Division. And only then did the tsar. He, being a military man from his youth, strove in all spheres of the life of the state to use the only army methods that he knew-and immediately militarized the road. By his decree formed the military workers, conductors and "telegraph" companies - since since August 6, 1851 and celebrate in Russia the day of the railway troops ... Compare: by that time in England the total length of railways exceeded 10,000 kilometers, and laid Them for private money, with the minimum participation of the state. While the Nikolayev road was built on British loans, foreign engineers, with the help of American steam-powered excavators. Well, the second practical railway in Russia in general, the British paved - during the Crimean War!.
It became a narrow-gauge railway from Balaklava to Sevastopol, which was absolutely necessary for supplying the Allied army. It was only thanks to this road that in May 1855 (eight months after the siege began!) The guns of the Europeans finally became larger than those of the bastions of Sevastopol, and their army no longer needed ammunition and other supplies. Which solved the outcome of the confrontation. You can even say that the advanced English technology won the war: steam and frigate ships and screw ships, rifled shotguns - and this narrow gauge railway.
From this point of view, the Crimean War became the prototype of the wars of the next century. And since in modern warfare communications solve very much, the British paved a 380 km underwater cable between Cape Fiolent and Varna along the bottom of the Black Sea - to connect with Paris and London. By the way, soon in Britain the Atlantic Telegraph Company was founded - for laying a transatlantic telegraph cable. The twentieth century began then, in the middle of the XIX century, as was noticed by the astute Jules Verne!.
But here is the paradox of logistics: the screw ships of Europeans without a fight drove the Russian fleet into its base and successfully landed a huge landing for thousands of miles from their native ports. These well-armed troops defeated the Russians in a field battle and besieged Sevastopol, after which the British established an ultramodern connection for those times with the expeditionary army. More than 400 transport ships and ships flew between Britain and Crimea, which delivered everything necessary for the conduct of hostilities to the Crimea. A true feast of scientific and military technological progress!.
However, a small distance between Balaklava and the positions near Sevastopol became a "bottleneck" in which all the efforts of the allied armies could be drowned. Their cartage literally drowned in mud slabs, spending many days overcoming a pathetic fifteen miles to the forefront. And if the Russian gunners constantly (and fairly) complained about the lack of shells and gunpowder, then even more grounds for complaints were from European artillerymen. The embankment of Balaklava, which became the base of the allied fleet, was clogged with ammunition and food. And while the besiegers experienced a real famine. And not only a shell and a shell, but also a literal one!.
Ammunition and food were brought to the position by carts, on a primer, which the British staff officers called "a track passing through the area" - so little it looked like a road. While the fine days of the southern autumn were standing, the "gauge" was fulfilling its purpose and the English command was not very concerned about the transport problem. For some reason, the British did not expect that they would have to stand in front of Sevastopol and provide the army for several winter months ... Alas, late autumn and then winter of 1854-55 turned out to be unusually harsh. All November there was continuous rain. The trenches of the besieged were flooded with water, the dirt roads washed away, and the tents in the camp of British troops were drowning under the black, truly Cimmerian sky in black, bottomless, truly primitive mud! And in December, imagine, it fell a deep snow and frosts came. Severe bad weather - in fact, who could have guessed that there is winter in Russia? !! Took the British Army by surprise. And French too, although Napoleon III's uncle was the great Bonaparte himself, who at the time suffered a lot from Russian General Winter!.
An eyewitness describes one of the days of autumn of 1854 near Balaklava: "The rain pours like a bucket, the sky is black as ink, the wind howls over the trembling tents, the trenches have turned into ditches, in the tents the water costs a whole foot. The soldiers do not have warm and waterproof clothing ". It was then, incidentally, that the British began to eat canned food, and to protect themselves from the piercing winds, they came up with a knitted hat-mask "balaclava" covering the face, which the special forces of the whole world like ... In the army, there was a strong shortage of fuel, medicines and hospital beds. Up to 150 Englishmen went to the hospital every day, and 40-50 died. It was necessary to reduce the soldier's norm of food, and in December there were cases when soldiers did not receive food at all, while the landing stage of Balaklava was overloaded with a deteriorating provision. Due to malnutrition and other deprivations, scurvy appeared in the troops, and in December a cholera epidemic started, which persecuted the allies from Balchik near Varna. The mortality from diseases significantly exceeded the losses from combat operations and assumed more and more threatening dimensions, as, indeed, in the Russian army, where the losses from diseases were four times higher than combat losses. In separate brigades, it reached three-quarters of the payroll.
All December and January the situation with the roads was desperate. Delivery of guns and mortars to positions ceased, there was a serious threat of a complete stoppage of food supplies. By January 1855 in Balaklava a huge amount of cargo from England. Among other things there was warm clothing and prefabricated barracks, but people in combat positions were dying from the cold. So it was not difficult for a single Russian to be in that winter. They even had the city behind their backs, and Europeans only have steppe and steppe around ... The third railway in Russia It was already in the autumn that it was not possible to take Sevastopol without good supplies - and the British took measures. In record time, seven weeks in January-March 1855, they laid a 22.5 km long steam train. She linked Balaklava with the front. And pay attention to a curious and quite possibly not coincidental coincidence: a well-informed newspaper "The Russian Disabled" in the issue of February 17 (March 1) 1855. Reported that the British are in full swing building a railway. On the next day, the chief railroader of Russia, Tsar Nikolai, died on the next day. The construction was carried out by civilian contractors, and at first 150 soldiers. On January 29, the ship "Lady Alice" brought the first batch of workers from England, delivered 1800 tons of rails, 6,000 sleepers, 300 tons of boards, two locomotives and a pile driving machine. An entire landing stage arrived in disassembled form. The work was done only by young and strong people. Work went day and night (with the light of special luminaires-braziers, arranged on high stands). The expedition consisted of a doctor and three paramedics. Special clothing was given, a portable kitchen operated for 6 people. For housing was allocated a tent of waterproof cloth for 40 people.
And it went wrong! Only an inadequate portion of rum (a third of the bottle per person) did not suit the workers and on this ground there were misunderstandings. The number of bottles is testified to the bottles still found in the excavation work near Balaklava ... In early February, the first 50 yards of the way were laid on the Balaklava embankment. The pace of work was very high. So, one evening a pile driving machine was unloaded from the ship, it was delivered in parts by the morning to the place where the bridge was built, assembled and prepared for work. By the evening of the next day, all the piles were jammed and the bridge construction finished! A day was built up to 400-500 m of the way, including the construction of small bridges, embankments and excavations for leveling the canvas. By March 26, the rails had been laid to the main apartment of the Englishmen at Maksimovich's dacha, 4.5 miles from Balaklava. In April the line already reached the front lines. According to it, all necessary military supplies were delivered to the trenches, which allowed ensuring an uninterrupted second bombing of the city. Daily it was transported up to 110 tons of cargo. In July, for the road, new locomotives, 130 wagons and 40 steam engines for steep ascents.
So the Allied steam ships locked the Black Sea Fleet in the bay of Sevastopol, and the locomotives ensured the victory of their armies on land. And if twenty kilometers of impassability were detained for half a year by the Allies, then what did Russian commissariat have to do with it? ? His horse transport in months of elm in the bottomless mud, overcoming a thousand-odd kilometers from the central provinces to the Crimean theater of military operations, and as a result did not cope with the task of supplying the garrison of Sevastopol. In the summer of 1855, the fatal fire of Anglo-French batteries became intolerable and in the beginning of autumn the defenders left the southern part of Sevastopol. Russia was forced to admit defeat.
Therefore, in May 1856. The railway was dismantled as unnecessary and taken to Turkey, and on July 12 the Allied forces finally left the Crimea. Before leaving, the British on a rock in the Kady-Koy area installed a marble plaque with a memorial inscription in honor of its construction, but in the summer of 1860. They tore it from the rock and smashed it. According to the explanation of the Tauride civil governor, Lieutenant-General G. Zhukovsky, it was done on the personal orders of the Novorossiysk and Bessarabia Governor-General Count A. Stroganova.
Steam locks of the knight of the empire And a little more about the specifics of British railway construction in the context of the Crimean War. Taking advantage of the Russian fleet's refusal to fight at sea, the British formed naval brigades, famous bluejackets, "blue jackets". In September 1854, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, Lord Raglan, appealed to the fleet to help the army and thousands of sailors and marines went ashore;.
Thus, in the picture of William Simpson from the Greenwich Marine Museum, a sketch was depicted on December 15, 1854. On the Diamond Battery, which was built and where the sailors of the illustrious captain William Peel, the rising star of the empire, the son of Robert Peel, the former prime minister, fought. In the center rises the captain himself, peering into enemy positions over the Lancaster 68-pounder gun. And if the French batteries could protect the defenders of Sevastopol in silence, the well-trained British gunners knew their business, and in heroism they were not inferior to the Russians. Once Peel saved his people when the Russian core fell among the newly delivered boxes of gunpowder, which they had not time to hide in a powdery cellar. The battery could take off into the air, but the captain grabbed a smoking heavy nucleus and threw it out at the bastion parapet. There it immediately exploded!.
And not only on the bastions of Peel showed the wonders of courage and composure. Prince Menshikov attempted the deblocade of Sevastopol and on November 5, 1854. Bloody Inkerman battle took place. The Cambridge Chronicle in its December 9 issue wrote: "Captain Peel with his adjutant was in the midst of the fire and once he was surrounded - along with the guards". These were the grenadiers of the Guards, the very ones that became famous for their red uniforms and high bear hats. Peel helped them out of the encirclement and saved the flag of the regiment!.
He was always in the forefront, or rather, he himself led everyone forward, here and June 18, 1855. , During the attack of the Great Redan, as the British called the 3rd Sevastopol Bastion, led the brave men with assault ladders. Alas, at the glacis of the bastion, he was seriously wounded. These three dates are knocked out on the back of his Cross of Victoria - the only case in the history of this highest military award of Britain. Some researchers believe that he was worthy of the three crosses, but the crown did not scatter them and only three people in the history of the Order were awarded a second award. The Motherland in the person of the Queen noted his services with another order, very honorable: July 5, 1855. "London Gazette" published a message that Captain Peel became a Knight of the Order of the Bath. This meant the erection of knightly dignity and henceforth he should have been addressed by Sir William! Alas, the wound did not heal well, and the knight was sent to England for treatment.
There, the restless captain, barely standing on his feet, spent a considerable amount (? 15,000), having built a railway branch at the request of his neighbors to Sandy town in Bedfordshire, near which his estate was located. The Sandy-Potton branch, better known as Captain Peale's railway, was opened on November 9, 1857. And lasted 110 years! The locomotive Shannon, named after the newest screw frigate, whose commander soon became Peel, has survived to this day and is adorned by the National Railway Museum in York.
Transatlantic postscript It would seem, what could be the connection between the transatlantic cable and the Crimean War? However, it is available. The fact is that the first-born among the helical battleships of Britain, on which the steam engine was designed for the project, was the 91-gun HMS Agamemnon. He joined the fleet in 1852. , During the Crimean War served as the flagship of Rear Admiral Lyons and October 17, 1854. Participated in the first bombing of Sevastopol, during which Kornilov was fatally wounded. A year later, Agamemnon suppressed Russian batteries on the Kinburn spit. It was thanks to such innovative ships that the Europeans gained dominance over the Black Sea, driving the Russian fleet into the base and forcing it to self-flood.
Well, after the war the ship was rented by American businessman Cyrus Field, the organizer of the joint stock company Atlantic Telegraph Company. It seems that his name, practical grasp and energy were subsequently borrowed by Jules Verne for his novels ... To make Field's idea a lot of money was required, but the glory of the telegraph was growing at an extraordinary speed at that time, the papers were enthusiastically writing about his great future, and Field quickly Collect a huge for those times the amount of 350,000 pounds sterling. In August 1857 year. "Agamemnon" and the newest American screw frigate "Niagara" began laying a telegraph cable from the south-west coast of Ireland, but because of the gap, the attempt had to be postponed for a year. The cable, weighing about 550 kg / km, consisted of seven copper wires covered with three layers of gutta-percha and an iron braid.
The second attempt was made in the summer of 1858. This time, Agamemnon and Niagara, having met on June 25 in the middle of the ocean, connected half of the cable and went each to their own shore. They were accompanied by auxiliary vessels, whose task was, among other things, to keep the course. The fact is that on ships loaded with thousands of kilometers of cable, the compasses practically did not function. To monitor the cable laid, Field established a permanent telegraph connection. Sensitive mirror galvanometers, designed by William Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin, recorded messages transmitted from another ship. Engaged in this ... Thomson himself, who participated in the expedition!.
The cable was torn several times, and it was necessary to start everything anew, return, raise it from the bottom, repair it, but as a result, on August 5, the ships successfully reached the island of Valentia near the south-west coast of Ireland and Newfoundland. August 16, 1858. The Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan exchanged congratulatory telegrams. The greeting of the English queen consisted of 103 words, but the transfer lasted 16 hours! Such a slow pace was due to the fact that because of the huge inductance of the cable length of 4500 km, short current pulses through it simply did not pass. The event aroused great enthusiasm, Cyrus Field became the hero of the day and newspapers all over the world wrote about the new victory of modern technology.
Alas, due to imperfect design and insufficient waterproofing, the cable did not last long and already in September 1858. , After the transfer of four hundred cablegrams, communication was broken. Apparently, corrosion affected, but one more reason could be too high voltage, sent from the English side to accelerate the transfer. Thomson did his best to restore the connection using the most sensitive galvanometers, he received telegrams for several more weeks, but on October 20, the mirror of the device faltered for the last time.
Newspapers, only yesterday glorifying the knight of modern times, this flawless Lancelot business, science and technology, boldly defied the ocean, rushed to brand a loser and a charlatan. Field was accused of poorly laying the cable, which he did consciously to do all the work again and warm his hands on this matter, and even that it was all a bluff, a trick with which Field and his companions artificially raised Shares of your company.
But he did not give up. Life has shown that operational communication between continents is absolutely necessary, and no one else has such experience and knowledge as Field. He again succeeded in attracting depositors, especially since before the end of the Civil War the rich industrialists of the northern states began to look for promising enterprises for investing their capital. He ordered a new, more advanced cable, and evaluate the scope of the entrepreneur! - rented the world's largest ship, the eighth wonder of the world, 32-thousand-ton "Great Eastern". It was on this giant that Jules Verne made his first trip to America and described it in the novel Floating Island.
When laying again there was a cable break, but the laying technology was already well mastered (Thomson again took part in the expedition and technology improvement) and in 1866. Finally managed to stretch the cable, providing a long-term connection between Europe and America.
And in order to avoid reproaches in departing from the topic, I will inform you that another participant of the Crimean War helped in laying this cable, a huge steamboat-frigate (warship with propellers) "Terrible". For the siege of Sevastopol he October 7, 1854. Unloaded part of his powerful 68-pound cannon in Balaklava, which did not prevent him from taking part in the naval bombing of the city on October 17. "Terrible" was the northernmost ship in the allied line and successfully smashed Fort Konstantin.
So lagging behind on the path of technological progress (and it is closely linked to the progress of social and ethical), remain on the sidelines or generally go to the bottom, as the ships of the Black Sea Fleet.
And the winners continue to develop. I, by the way, admired this frigate in the painting in the museum of the Fort Keep in Bermuda. On it, in conjunction with the first battleships of the world, HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince, tows across the Atlantic an extremely unusual giant structure, the rusty remains of which I also saw on the other side of the strait leading to the inner lagoon of Bermuda. But this is a completely different story.
Author: Yuri Kirpichev.