Welcome to Russian history retold episode 144, The Crimean War, The Leaders.

While doing some maintenance on the podcast in June of 2022, I noted that this episode was missing.

Not only that, I couldn't find the script I wrote about six years ago.

So today I'm gonna talk about the men who led the Crimean War effort on both sides of the conflict.

On the Russian side, we have Zor Nicholas I, who started the conflict and died before its conclusion in 1855.

He was followed by a son Alexander II.

The latter understood the calamity that was occurring and helped bring an end to the war in 1856.

The military leaders were Prince Alexander Sergeyevich Menchikov, Prince Mikhail Demetriyevich Gorkuchov, and Admiral Pavel Stepanovich Nakamin Mov.

The allied forces include Ottoman representatives Abdulmejid I and Omar Pasha.

The French were led by Emperor Napoleon III and Armand Jacques Lorois Saint Arno.

The main forces of the British Empire were led by Earl of Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon.

Viscount Palmerston, John Temple III.

In Lord Raglan, Field Marshal Fitzroy James Henry, Somerset.

Italy was represented by Alfonso Ferreira, Lamar Mora, and the Caucasus and Mammate leader Imam Shamir.

These 14 men were responsible for the deaths of approximately 675,000 soldiers, most from disease and not from combat.

The conditions the fighters had to endure were frankly appalling.

Their leaders were the ones who must bear the blame for what happened in Crimea.

The head of the Ottoman Empire in 1853 when the Crimean War broke out was Abdulmejid I, the 31st Sultan.

He would take possession of his position when he was a mere 16 years old.

Abdulmejid was responsible for the Ottoman Empire's admission to the European family of nations after the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the conflict.

He would also be responsible for what was known as the Tens Mammate, a program of modernization desperately needed.

Abdulmejid would also try to stem the tide of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire, something he and his successors would prove unable to achieve.

...