THE CRIMEAN WAR DISASTER AND THE LIES OF WAR.
Wars generate lying on a massive scale. We are right and they are wrong. This is for the glory of the nation. This is your Christian duty. The Crimean War lasted from October 1853 to February, 1856. It was a coalition of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire with support from Austria against Russia. Russia lost, but really nothing much changed.

It was formally about church arrangements in Jerusalem, and whether the Russian orthodox or Catholics should run the holy sites, but actually the churches sorted it out with the Ottomans. There were territory disputes with the Austrians, but they too were sorted out at the start of the War. Partly, it was about Russian influence in the Black Sea and pushing back Russia so that it did not have a naval presence there. There was no obvious reason for the French and British to support the Ottoman Empire. We could ask why Britain was even involved. Perhaps we were worried that Russia, rather than Britain, might be Great. So, each of the powers plunged into a war which had no real purpose or rationale with lies of patriotism swaying their populations and precipitating the War. Those who opposed the War in Britain, especially Cobden and Bright, were called traitors, as they always are.

Nearly one and a half millions troops took part, and some 430-600,000 died, a lot through disease. Most of them were young and their families would need them back home. So, we remember half a million who lost their lives needlessly. The British casualties were 22,182 who died needlessly in a War we should not have fought, with engagements which were mistakes, and without basic care, until Florence Nightingale came along. We will remember these 22,182 needless British deaths, but we also remember our contribution to half a million deaths. We should always remember those we kill as well as our killed.

Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” sees it as both as glorious and a disaster, but actually it and the whole war was a disaster, but let us look at how the Charge was dished up. The poem is fundamentally dishonest.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
   All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
   Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
   Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
   Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
   All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
   Noble six hundred!

Someone had blundered, but not Lord Raglan.

We look at Hansard and the establishment’s praise of the big brass, even when they had made such a mess of things.

House of Lords 14/12/1854 THE DUKE OF RICHMOND presented a petition from the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of Wakefield, praying that the war may be brought to a speedy, successful, and honourable termination. The petitioners expressed the utmost admiration of the undaunted courage displayed by the allied forces at Alma and elsewhere, but regretted that the force in the Crimea was not sufficient to attain the object contemplated by the expedition, the capture of Sebastopol. The petitioners, therefore, prayed that the House would impress on Her Majesty’s Government the necessity of bringing all the resources of the country to bear, in order that the war might be brought to a successful and honourable termination. He need not assure their Lordships how fully he concurred in the prayer of the petition, and was glad to find that it was the intention of the Government to prosecute the war vigorously, and send reinforcements as speedily as possible. As he should not be in his place in the House to-morrow, when it was intended to move a Vote of Thanks to the army and navy, because he was about to join his regiment in order to induce as many of them as possible to volunteer, and as in that way he would, perhaps, promote the public service more than by making speeches in the House, he begged to take that opportunity of stating that lie joined most cordially in admiration of the conduct of Lord Raglan and the British soldiers under his command, who had justly entitled themselves to the Thanks of Parliament and the country. They had had to contend with difficulties which would have tried severely an army of veterans, and he was sure the House and the country would be unanimous in voting them Thanks for their gallant conduct, and for the perseverance, steadiness, and coolness they had exhibited under fire. Lord Raglan had exhibited perseverance, quickness, and coolness under fire—which was not surprising—and had shown all the abilities of a great general, and he hoped and trusted that Providence would preserve his life, and enable him to come back to England and reap the just reward of his brilliant services.” This speech advocates ending and continuing the war. It is a rag-bag of establishment sycophancy. If you swallow Lord Raglan and the “just reward of his brilliant services”, you swallow anything. It cloaks what was actually going on in a tissue of lies – it is War in Christmas wrapping paper

LEO TOLSTOY.
We leave it to the world’s greatest novelist to tell the final lie and the truth from the Russian side of the Crimean War.

SEVASTOPOL.
The doctor, after bandaging the other officer’s wound, pointed to Kozeltzoff and said something to a priest with a huge reddish beard and a cross, who was standing nearby.“What! Am I dying?” Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latter approached him.The priest without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed the cross to the wounded man.Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his weal hands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.“Well, were the French repulsed?” he inquired of the priest, in firm tones.“The victory has remained with us at every point,” replied the priest in order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that the French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.

To honour the dead we tell the truth about war.