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  • The National Army Museum Book of the Crimean War: The Untold Stories
  • Harold E. Raugh Jr.
The National Army Museum Book of the Crimean War: The Untold Stories. By Alastair Massie. London: Pan Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 0-283-07355-1. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Bibliography. Indexes. Pp. xxiv, 280. £25.00.

The Crimean War, 1854-56, pitted Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and later Sardinia, against Russia. It was the only large-scale conflict Great Britain fought against a European adversary between 1815 and 1914. The Crimean War is well known for the initial failure of Britain's logistics and support systems, its antiquated weapons and tactics, and outdated and generally poor senior leadership, that resulted in tremendous soldier suffering, especially over the harsh winter of 1854-55.

For the first time in history, an increasingly literate British public learned almost instantaneously, in uncensored reports sent by war correspondents via the newly invented telegraph, of the horrors of war and hardships of the soldiers. Moreover, the soldiers' realistic letters describing the grueling conditions in the Crimea were processed through a relatively efficient postal service and delivered home comparatively quickly by steamship. This unprecedented deluge of justified condemnation outraged the British public, which forced the fall of Lord Aberdeen's government in January 1855.

Author Alastair Massie, of the staff of Great Britain's National Army Museum and curator of its sesquicentennial exhibition on the Crimean War, has written a superb study of the Crimean War, including and highlighting the Museum's generally unpublished first-hand accounts. This book is divided into ten chapters, organized chronologically, with each containing numerous contemporary officer and soldier letter and diary excerpts. The first five chapters focus on the background of the conflict and the British deployment to the Crimea, the battle of the Alma (20 September 1854), the beginning of the siege of Sevastopol (October 1854), and the engagements at Balaklava (25 October 1854) and Inkerman (5 November 1854). Whereas many Crimean War studies concentrate on these "flashy" battles and give inadequate attention to the subsequent long siege and eventual capture of Sevastopol in September 1855, Massie devotes four chapters to this crucial latter phase of the war—when the vast majority of soldiers' letters and diaries were written. The final chapter chronicles the arguably anticlimactic end of the war and peace, when Captain Maxwell Earle wrote to his father that "I have seen more joy in the army after the taking of a rifle pit than after the fall of Sebastopol." [End Page 1259]

The unmatched collection of soldiers' letters, diaries, and other accounts from the Crimean War, archived in the National Army Museum and used extensively in this chronicle, provide unparalleled insight into and an unvarnished perspective on the Crimean War participants' trials and tribulations.

These documents range from, among many others, the commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan's, voluminous papers, to official reports of division and subordinate commanders, to letters and diaries of cavalry troopers and infantrymen. These accounts help instill a sense of immediacy into the chronicle, give a face to the anonymity of combat, and shed light on the human dimension of warfare.

The National Army Museum Book of the Crimean War is an outstanding work. Containing excellent maps, superb illustrations, and a well-crafted narrative, interspersed with numerous poignant, generally heartfelt, and occasionally excited and despondent first-hand accounts, this splendid volume deserves a place on the bookshelves of every Victorian military history scholar and enthusiast.

Harold E. Raugh Jr.
Monterey, California
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