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The Crimean War
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of recent years, railways, telegraphs, enormous guns, iron ships, airships, have made war, not only much more terrible, but infinitely more expensive; and, so, each nation will naturally shrink from being the first to start a war, for defeat will spell absolute and irretrievable ruin. But I don't think there can be any doubt that the only safe thing for all of us who love our country is to learn soldiering at once, and to be prepared to fight at any moment.
The Crimean War, 1854–6.The one European war which we fought in the nineteenth century was the ‘Crimean War’. England and France fought Russia, on behalf of Turkey, in 1854–6. The Turkish State was believed to be crumbling, and certainly the Turks were real barbarians, who governed their provinces very badly; and, being Mohammedans, they denied all justice to their Christian subjects. Russia claimed to protect these subjects, but every one knew that she only did this in order to swallow as much of the Turkish Empire as she could. All other powers dreaded Russia, a half-barbarous state of vast size, and full of very brave, if very stupid soldiers. Some people think that the cunning Frenchmen led England by the nose into this war, and that it was no business of ours. It was fought in the peninsula of the Crimea, on the northern coast of the Black Sea. There were some terrible battles, those of the Alma, of Balaclava, of Inkermann, in the autumn of 1854; then the war settled into a long siege of Sebastopol, during an awful winter, in which the sufferings of our army in the trenches before the city were terrible. In the end Russia had to own herself beaten, and Turkey, whom people called the ‘Sick Man of Europe’, was propped up again. Though many of his other provinces have revolted from him, he