History: The Crimean War of 1854-56 was one of those unnecessary conflicts which illustrate well the intermittently attractive A.J.P. Taylor thesis of wars caused by blundering politicians and diplomats, writes Frank McLynn.
There were no significant economic or geopolitical interests at stake, and a fatuous squabble over keys to churches in the Holy Land became an excuse for the Great Powers to whittle down further the standing of Turkey, the "sick man" of Europe. But if the causes were trivial, the consequences were not.
At least 650,000 men died in the conflict, only one-fifth in battle, the rest from cholera, typhoid, scurvy and typhus. Russia suffered 475,000 fatalities, France 95,000, Turkey 50,000 and Britain 22,000 (only 4,000 in battle). Sardinia, under Cavour allied to the French, lost 2,000 men to cholera and only 28 in the fighting. The deaths from disease can largely be set down to ignorance and incompetence; the level of British and Russian leadership, especially, was dire. The war was riven with contradictions.The Allies could beat Russia only if Austria joined in, but British recalcitrance and bloodymindedness meant there was never any chance of that. The British position was especially bizarre for, a first-class naval power, she was pitted against Russia, the premier land-based power. It was thus a case of Athens versus Sparta, except that this time there was no Syracuse to swing the balance for Sparta. But Ponting does establish that it was not for want of British incompetence that a Syracuse did not appear; by 1856 the United States was on the brink of entering the conflict on the Russian side.
One consequence of the lopsided duel of comparative advantage between Russia and Britain was that the French ended up doing most of the fighting on land. They were in any case better equipped to fight the Crimean campaign than the British as they had honed their fighting skills in vicious wars in Algeria. But even when all allowances have been made, France still made a better showing than perfidious Albion. In the winter of 1854-55, the French maintained an army four times the size of their British counterpart with far less shipping to supply it. The collapse of logistical support for the British army was the result of sheer pea-brained fecklessness on London's part. A few examples may be cited. The main supply port, Balaklava, was much too far away from the main British camp; most senior British officers returned home in the winter of 1854-55, leaving their men to starve in the cold and rain; and the High Command refused to appoint the only decent British general to the commander-in-chief's position as this would have offended against "Buggins's turn". Clive Ponting, who has himself suffered from the purblind fatuousness of the British Establishment, predictably relishes pointing up the myriad idiocies.
The publishers have chosen to subtitle this book "the truth behind the myth" but the reality is that the myth has been subverted long ago, and there is little here that will be new to the student of the Crimean War. True, Ponting includes the usually neglected British forays into the Baltic, and even the Arctic and Pacific, but at this time of day yet another retelling of the hatred and jealousy existing between Lords Raglan, Lucan and Cardigan and the stupendous fiasco of the Charge of the Light Brigade is slightly old hat. In any case, Ponting does not make the most of his chances here, and his rather uninspired account suffers by comparison with Cecil Woodham Smith's classic version. Clive Ponting is a well-known iconoclast,with a particular penchant for taking a pop at British idols, so Florence Nightingale predictably comes under his verbal cosh. But the myth of the "Lady with the Lamp" has long since been punctured; the consensus view, of all but Paul Johnson-style "England, right or wrong" writers, is that she was an egomaniacal, arrogant self-publicist with powerful Establishment connections who promoted her in the media. In nursing terms she achieved very little, stole the credit for the work of others, and appears in a particularly poor light alongside genuine nursing heroines like the Jamaican "mulatto" nurse Mary Seacole.
Bertrand Russell once suggested, only half-jokingly, that history could benefit from a division of labour, with one person doing the research and another the writing. But Ponting's book set me wondering. He is a highly talented researcher, and his archival sleuthing is admirable, not least in the avoidance of the cliché. For example, the eyewitness Fanny Duberley has been absurdly overhyped by feminist historians; Ponting cites her just once, inconsequentially. Yet Ponting the writer rarely rises above his initial metier, as a civil servant providing a lucid tour d'horizon. He seems almost bored by the task of narrative and decants most of his primary sources into "boxouts" that interrupt the flow of his story. These "boxouts" comprise fully 80 pages out of 340 of text. This seems to be poor craftsmanship and an abdication of the historical writer's responsibility. Ponting should have integrated his sources seamlessly into the narrative, which might have given it more verve. As it is, Ponting's history has a flat, staccato, "bullet-point" flavour about it. The American expression about "phoning in one's lines" comes to mind.
Frank McLynn's most recent book, 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World, was published earlier this year by Jonathan Cape.
The Crimean War: The Truth Behind the Myth. By Clive Ponting, Chatto, 379pp. £20