We've yet to outrun Karr

“plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”-- the more things change, the more they stay the same.

How true.  Despite our modernity, we have yet to outrun Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's aphorism, penned in January 1849 for Les Guêpes magazine (The Wasp).  

Les Guêpes was a side publication for Karr.  He established it while editor of Le Figaro, (c. 1839).  Le Figaro is still one of France's premier daily morning newspapers.

Karr was renowned for acerbic observations of politicians and erstwhile emperors.  Sometimes he ran into trouble.  After a ten-year publishing run, Les Guêpes took a brief hiatus, before Karr tried to revive it (1853 - 1855).  The venture ran afoul of ardent state censorship under Napoleon III, the self proclaimed Emperor of France. 

Elected to the Presidency of France in 1848, Napoleon III could not be reelected constitutionally.  So, what to do?  He ignored France's constitution and seized power by force in 1851 declaring himself Emperor of France.  Sounds eerily similar in intent to the riotous insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC a couple years back.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Napoleon III, courtesy Encyclopedia Britannica

Napoleon III would be the very last monarch over France, self declared or otherwise.  He reigned for nearly 20 years...until he was captured at the Battle of Sedan in 1870 during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, personally declared by Napoleon III and in which he personally commanded troops.  So, no one else to blame.

During Napoleon III's rule, annexation was all the rage.  Everybody was doing it.  (And still are if Ukraine today is any guide.) France was busy adding to its empire.  So was Britain and Russia. Little wonder that with so many territorial land grabs going on, they would eventually lead to conflict.  France allied with other imperialists--Britain, Turkey and Sardinia--to defeat imperialist Russia in the Crimean War (1853 - 1856).  

The Crimean War is something of a misnomer.  The war took place globally--in the Black Sea, the Baltic, the Arctic, the Balkans and in the Pacific.  As a result of this global war, the United States would acquire Alaska by purchase (i.e. "Seward's Folly") on October 18, 1867 from Czar Alexander II (who needed the money following Russia's defeat).  The Czar figured he was making quite the deal by offing "Siberia's Siberia" onto the American rubes.  The Czar did not want to risk losing the Alaskan claim since archenemy Britain could easily take the territory by a direct invasion from next door Canada, and Russia lacked the means to defend it.  So, he took the money.  Besides, the sea otters that Russian fur traders had exploited to near extinction were gone.  Who needs a fur trading empire if there ain't no furs?  (Klondike gold had yet to be discovered.)    

1855 Valley of the Shadow of Death (Charge of Light Brigade) littered with solid cannonballs

Other than Alaska, probably the only lasting good from the horrific Crimean War was that Florence Nightingale would go on to found modern nursing based on her experiences in the Crimean War.  She saved countless lives during the Crimean War, as well as lives that followed in other conflicts--including those in the US War Between the States only five years after the Crimean War.  Confederate medical care adopted Nightingale's discipline.  The Union did not.  Thus, the chance of survival in a Confederate hospital vastly outnumbered one's chance in a Union one.  For example, Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins, the only female commissioned as a Confederate officer, treated over 1300 seriously wounded men.  Of those, only 79 died--a record no other "Civil War" hospital came close to obtaining.  Invited to speak after the war by preeminent Johns Hopkins Hospital, she was asked how she achieved this.  Tompkins said:  "Clean, clean, clean."  (Out of medical supplies she even used kerosene as a cleaner and disinfectant.)  

Anyhow, the Crimean War was one fought over territory and trade.  All of these are usually culprits.  Imperialist Russia's appetite for somebody else's land seems unwhetted even today, as the bullying of Ukraine suggests.  Back in the summer of 1853, Russia occupied (invaded) the Danubian Principalities (Romania and Moldova) which were under Ottoman control. Czarist Russia dismissed the Ottomans as "the sick man of Europe" judging them as too weak to resist the Russian goal to expand and take Turkish lands to open the eastern Mediterranean for Russian control. This specific land grab is normally given as the cause of the war.

Securing promises of international support from Britain and France, the Ottomans declared war on Russia October 4, 1853.  Curiously though, despite claims, the invasion of the Danube was not the actual casus belli of the Crimean War.  It was religion--nothing new under the Sun there either.  

The fight was not between Islam and Christianity and/or Jewish.  Christians in the Holy Lands controlled by the Ottomans had little need of protection.  Rather, protection was sought against internecine fighting in the Holy Land amongst the Christians themselves--specifically between Eastern Orthodox (supported by Russia) and Roman Catholic (supported by France).

Church of the Nativity, photo courtesy CatholicPhilly.com

The row was over who controlled the various Christian holy sites in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  To diffuse the conflict in 1850, the Ottomans sent the French two keys to the Church of the Nativity.  At the same time, the Ottomans issued a decree to the Russians giving assurances that the keys would not fit the door lock.  Too clever a diplomatic "solution" by half.  The "keys to the door war" escalated. 

In 1852, France under Napoleon III responded to the Ottoman effort to deescalate it.  The self declared Emperor seized control of the holy sites.  Russian Czar Nicholas I viewed the French move as an affront both to Russia and to its Orthodox Church.  The British tried to arbitrate.  And all of a sudden Nicholas I changed his spin and declared Russia's desire for expansion was no longer the priority...all he wanted to do was protect his Christian (Orthodox) communities in the Holy Land.  Uh, right.

So, what does Czar Nicholas I do?  Well, he invades Danube Principalities some 1750 miles distant from the "hot" conflict over the door keys to the Church of the Nativity, "Away in the Manger" notwithstanding.      

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  We've all heard the current excuses about "protecting" Russian speaking people to justify the ongoing criminal war in Ukraine as well.  Russian imperialistic warfare version 2022. 

Incompetence in the Crimean War (on both sides) unnecessarily cost many thousands of lives.  Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" memorialized the Battle of Balaclava and the horrific waste basically for nothing. Balaclava also gave us the term "thin red line"--so named for the 93rd Regiment of Foot (Sutherland Highlanders) who withstood a massed Russian cavalry attack that had as its objective the capture of the Balaclava anchorage.  Three companies of the 93rd  Highlanders were all that stood between the massed Russian cavalry and the docks at Balaclava.  Were it not for raw courage and the improved accuracy and range of the Highlanders' new Pattern 1851 Minié rifle (which out ranged Russian muskets by 400 yards) doubtless the Scots would have been overrun, and the British and French efforts in the Crimean War turned into a catastrophic total failure. 

Spring 1855 Balaclava Harbor taken by Roger Fenton; note steamers moored with sailing ships

The Crimean War was the first "modern" war, employing railroads, telegraphs, and explosive naval ordnance versus solid shot.  It was the first war to be covered by reporters and photographers.  It came to symbolize military mismanagement, tactical failures, logistical logjams and medical barbarism until the Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856 mercifully ended it.

Spring 1855 Balaclava Harbor rail head being laid; taken by Roger Fenton

 

The war was a turning point for Russia.  No question.  It wrecked the Imperial Russian Army and sapped its national treasury.  It would take decades to recover (one of the reasons why the Russian Czar sold off Alaska).  Russian influence in Europe was shattered.  And so too its ambitions upon the eastern Mediterranean.  As is generally the case from armchair generals after a loss, Russian elite (mostly those who didn't fight) sought explanations.  That led to fundamental reform such as the Edict of Emancipation of 1861 abolishing serfdom, not that conditions changed very much for the underclasses in Russia.

Given they had just fought and lost the "modern" Crimean War, czarist Russia began a fast paced program of modernization (at least as imperialist Russia saw things) to recover its lost status in Europe.  If this sounds familiar, it should.  The circumstances are little changed.  Modern technological war, in primitive frozen and muddy trenches.  Ongoing conflict between Catholic and Orthodox.  Land grabs, threats and somewhere, in some wretched barnyard hovel under cold night skies, the Christ child is born.  No room in the inn.  No room in the heart for the Prince of Peace.  The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

 

[Grammatical note:  An aphorism is a concise, terse expression of a general truth.  The word was first used in Aphorisms of Hippocrates (c. 460 BC - 375 BC). "Ὁ βίος βραχύς, δὲ τέχνη μακρή" - "life is short, art is long".  Ancient aphoristic collections are typically known as wisdom literature, e.g. Book of Ecclesiastes.]