A single key at the Church of the Nativity sparked the Crimean War
The Crimean War was ignited by a dispute over the ownership of a key at the Church of the Nativity; England, France, and Russia slid into this conflict in mutual suspicion and miscalculation, sleepwalking into it like the Great Powers of World War I to come.
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Preserving poetic metre meant hiding the actual death toll
Tennyson wrote ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ based on the Times' initial erroneous report, setting the number of participants at 600. But in fact the Light Brigade—all 700 strong—charged into a valley a mile and a half long and a mile wide, surrounded on three sides by some 50 heavy guns; only 195 returned. When Tennyson later learned the true number, he refused to change it, saying it would ruin the poem's metre. So what endured was 600; the fact was 700.
— TomBritain's most famous cavalry officer never fought a real battle
By 1853, the Earl of Cardigan, about to lead the Light Brigade, was 56 and one of the most famous officers in England—yet had never actually seen combat. He rose through purchased commissions and despised the ‘Indian officers’ who climbed the ranks through battlefield success in India and elsewhere. In his own 11th Hussars, he spent ten thousand pounds a year on kit alone, making his men the most splendidly dressed soldiers in the entire British Army, perhaps the world.
— TomScandal followed Cardigan everywhere, yet his rank always saved him
Cardigan faced a divorce scandal for abducting a friend's wife, became a national laughing-stock over the black bottle affair—when an officer brought a non-champagne bottle to dinner—duelled on Wimbledon Common and shot his opponent in the ribs, and was caught by a private detective in an assignation with Lord Paget's wife. Any one would have destroyed his career and court-martialled him; each time, his aristocratic rank and parliamentary connections saved him. Public ridicule never quite dented his arrogance.
— TomA key from the Church of the Nativity ignited a continental war
Few wars, Dominic notes, have had so trivial a spark as the Crimean War: the dispute centred on whether the key to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem should be kept by the Catholic or Orthodox Church. What began as a small affair cooked up by France's new ambassador to Constantinople, La Valette, to curry favour with French Catholics, touched off Russia's grand narrative of itself as ‘Neo-Byzantium’, with a mission to liberate Orthodox Christians. A ceremonial quarrel escalated into a confrontation between great powers.
— DominicThe Tsar believed he had made a secret pact with Britain
Tsar Nicholas I visited London incognito in 1844, had pleasant talks with Queen Victoria and several ministers, and left convinced he had struck a gentleman's agreement with Britain: Russia could proceed to ‘liberate’ the Balkans and partition the Ottoman Empire, and England would not object. He spoke constantly of his ‘sick man’ metaphor but entirely misread how British politics worked. He did not understand that an audience with the Queen and Premier was not the same as getting an entire nation's endorsement.
— TomBritain's Russian panic was born more of self-induced fear than real threat
British hostility to Russia stemmed partly from real tragedy—the Tsar's brutal suppression of Poland—but far more from pathological anxiety about India's security, and fears that Russian expansion in Central Asia would eventually threaten it. Tom is clear: this was not what Russia cared about at all. The Tsar had not put British India in his calculations. Yet Whitehall obsessed over Central Asian maps in endless scenarios. This panic would persist into the years before the Great War.
— TomLucan's evictions amid famine earned him the name 'the Exterminator'
The other cavalry commander, the Earl of Lucan, held ancestral estates in County Mayo in Ireland. He believed modernising farmland was a rational way to treat his tenants, and during the worst of the potato famine, he pressed ahead with his clearance scheme: evicting over 2,000 people, demolishing over 300 dwellings, even closing the workhouse—the only refuge the starving could turn to. He was publicly attacked for this in the House of Lords, and the people of Mayo called him ‘the Exterminator’. Not from cruelty, but from an utter incapacity to imagine another's suffering.
— TomTwo men who hated each other led the cavalry into Crimea
Lucan had married Cardigan's favourite sister Anne, a love match that curdled over Lucan's callousness, domineering nature, and meanness. Anne eventually left him and returned to England to live alone. Cardigan hated his brother-in-law bitterly. After Britain and France declared war on Russia on 28 March 1854, these two mutually hostile nobles—the flamboyant, showy Cardigan and the rigid, carping Lucan—would lead cavalry to Crimea together, laying the groundwork for the disasters to come in later episodes.
In their own words · checked verbatim
i would say that the rule of thumb in this series is that if something can be screwed up it is screwed up
Tom6:14
i don't care she's the most damned bed-tempered and extravagant bitch in the kingdom
Tom26:58
never has there been a war it's said possibly for the war of jenkins's ear where the immediate cause the kind of trigger appears to be so extraordinarily inconsequential
Dominic43:43
we have a sick man on our hands a man gravely ill it will be a great misfortune if he slips through our hands especially before the necessary arrangements are made
Tom56:10
he was totally unable to distinguish between what was important and what was not he was perpetually entangled in trifles forever struggling in a web of trivialities his temper was irritable and his severity grew
Tom1:00:24
he's accused in the house of lords um of having turned out his tenants when there was no food in the country and no money to buy it and in mayo itself he's called the exterminator
Tom1:04:37
Figures
| Light Brigade's actual participants | 700 | 5:08 |
| Survivors who returned from the charge | 195 | 5:08 |
| Heavy guns surrounding the valley | approximately 50 | 4:06 |
| Time of the charge | 25 October 1854 at 11:10 a.m. | 5:08 |
| People evicted by Lucan in County Mayo | over 2,000 | 1:04:37 |
| Dwellings demolished by Lucan | over 300 | 1:04:37 |
| Date of Britain and France's declaration of war on Russia | 28 March 1854 | 1:05:37 |
| Tsar Nicholas I's age in 1853 | 59 | 49:58 |
Glossary
- sublime port
- A euphemism for the Ottoman Empire's government, derived from the entrance to the Sultan's court.
- plunger
- A Victorian-era slang term for a cavalry officer who affected extravagant display and fashionable conduct.
- cavalry drawl
- The affected speech of aristocratic cavalry officers, who drawled their vowels to distinguish themselves from the middle class.
- black bottle affair
- A national scandal when Cardigan rebuked an officer for bringing a non-champagne bottle to dinner.
- sick man of Europe
- Tsar Nicholas I's famous metaphor for the dying Ottoman Empire.
How to listen
History enthusiasts interested in Victorian-era British aristocratic military culture and how great powers slide toward war through mutual miscalculation.
The ads at the start and the host's reading of Tennyson's original poem can be skipped without affecting understanding of the historical content that follows.