Crimean War | |||||||
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Part of the Ottoman wars in Europe and the Russo-Turkish wars | |||||||
Detail of Franz Roubaud's panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol (1904) |
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Strength | |||||||
Total: 603,132 |
Total: 889,000
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Casualties and losses | |||||||
223,513 2,166 28 killed in action 2,138 died of disease |
530,125 35,671 killed in action 37,454 died of wounds 377,000 died from non-combat causes 80,000 wounded |
223,513
Ottoman Empire
45,400
10,100 killed in action
10,800 died of wounds
24,500 died of disease French Empire
135,485
8,490 killed in action;
11,750 died of wounds;
75,375 died of disease
39,870 wounded
British Empire
40,462
2,755 killed in action
1,847 died of wounds
17,580 died of disease
18,280 wounded
The Crimean War (French: Guerre de Crimée; Russian: Кры́мская война́ Krymskaya voina or Russian: Восто́чная война́ Vostochnaya voina ("Eastern War"); Turkish: Kırım Savaşı) was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense. It has widely been noted that the causes, in one case involving an argument over a key, have never revealed a "greater confusion of purpose", yet led to a war noted for its "notoriously incompetent international butchery".