And the The Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 145, The Crimean War, Part 5. Last time we talked about the leaders of the military combatants of the Crimean War, the British, French,

Sardinians, and Turks on one side, the Russians on the other. Now we begin the fighting in earnest.

But before I go on, if you're expecting blow-by-blow accounts of the battles,

you're going to be sorely disappointed.

That is not something I feel is necessary or something I really want to do, and there are a number

of really good books on the subject, and I really want to get more into the general

picture of the war instead of delving into the minutia. If I did we'd probably

finish the Crimean War sometime next year. So on with the story. The Danubian

campaign was the starting point of the Crimean War and something I only

briefly touched upon previously. It predated the entry of the British and the French.

In May of 1853, Field Marshal Paschkevich and Gorchikov led 80,000 Russian soldiers across the Pruth River into Moldavia and Wallachia.

This, you should remember, is the same Pruth River that in July of 1711 Peter the Great found himself surrounded by a vastly

larger Ottoman Empire and was lucky to have made it out alive.

This time the odds were just a little bit better but not by much. The

Ottomans hearing of the troop movement sent their forces northward, fortifying

the strongholds of Vidim and Silistra near the mouth of the Danube.

This movement of large numbers of armed men made the neighboring Austrians very nervous.

But there was no debate about who they were most concerned about.

It was the Russians.

Try as they might, diplomatic missions to Vienna failed to convince the Austrians to join with the Russians against the Turks.

This is the same failed foreign policy that Nicholas I kept trying with the British.

He just couldn't get it into his head. Why they didn't want to just carve up the collapsing Ottoman Empire?

...