An unnecessary war is over.

1856 On March 30th, Russia, Britain, France, Ottoman Turkey and other countries signed the Paris Peace Treaty.

As a result, the Crimean war, which lasted for three years, has just begun to end.

The Crimean War means that during the period from 65438 to 0853, the allied forces composed of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia declared war on Russia for the control of the Balkans. In the end, it ended in Russia's defeat, and Russia lost its position as the European hegemon.

Tolstoy, a great writer, participated in the most important siege of Sevastopol as a second lieutenant in the Russian army when he was young. This experience gave him a profound description of the war in War and Peace.

Strangely, some people called the Crimean War "unnecessary war". War history researchers define the Crimean War as "the first modern war".

Why do people have such a complicated evaluation of the Crimean war?

Let's start with the cause of the war.

The main warring parties in this war are: Russia, Ottoman Empire, Britain and France. They have different interests in participating in the war.

First, Russia wants to get through the Black Sea.

Russia wants to protect the Orthodox Christians in Ottoman Turkey, seize the Crimean Peninsula and open the sea passage to the Black Sea. Russian rulers Peter the Great, Catherine II and even Russian President Vladimir Putin all set their eyes on the Crimean peninsula.

Second, Britain wants to contain Russian forces.

Britain does not want Russia to be too strong to compete with itself in Europe and Asia. After Alexander I led the anti-French alliance to defeat Napoleon, Russia became the de facto European hegemon, and Britain needed to weaken Russia. In addition, large-scale newspaper reports have caused "Russian phobia" in Britain. Under the pressure of public opinion, Britain sent troops to Crimea.

Third, France wants to restore its international status.

French Emperor Charles Louis Napolé on Bonaparte hoped to restore France's international influence and consolidate his position through foreign wars.

In the end, of course, the Ottoman Empire was forced to join the war, and the Russian invasion forced them to fight back.

These countries all have their own small abacus, so it is really strange to fight.

So why is the Crimean war a modern war? We can understand this problem from three levels.

First, the Crimean war has many elements of modern war, which is the first time.

For example, the media mentioned earlier. The emergence of the telegraph allows reporters to quickly convey the situation on the front line, and newspapers and periodicals also follow up the war. For the first time, a large number of "melon eaters" paid attention to the progress of the war.

Another example is the first large-scale trench warfare in the Crimean War. In addition, the railway was first applied to the transportation of military materials. One of the reasons for Russia's failure is that the supply mode is backward, and the efficiency is far lower than that of British train transportation.

Second, the Crimean War stimulated the modernization of Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

The Crimean War was to Russia what the Sino-Japanese War was to China. Two land-based agricultural powers lost to maritime countries in foreign wars, which completely exposed the weakness under the strong appearance.

After the Crimean War, Russia sold Alaska to the United States cheaply to contain Britain, and lost the possibility of setting foot in North America. Tsar Alexander II began reforms, including abolishing serfdom and reforming the military system, education and judicial system.

Similarly, after the Sino-Japanese War, Emperor Guangxu tried to reform, which was the famous Reform Movement of 1898. But in the end, both China and Russia abolished the monarchy and embarked on the road of revolution to promote modernization.

So did the Ottoman Empire. At that time, all countries called the Ottoman Empire "the sick man of Europe", just as poor China was called "the sick man of East Asia". As early as before the Crimean War, the Ottoman Empire had already begun the Tanzimeter period of reform, and the post-war reforms were further deepened, such as imitating Napoleon's code and compiling imperial code.

Eleven years after the war, Sultan Abdul-Amede II declared a constitutional monarchy, which is called the constitutional period in history. Under the protection and coordination of the great powers, the empire survived after the First World War until Kemal led the Turkish War of Independence to victory.

Third, there were many new things that affected modern life in the Crimean War.

First, promote the birth of modern nursing.

Nightingale, a British nurse, promoted the establishment of a field hospital so that injured soldiers could get better care. Nightingale's professional and responsible attitude won the general favor of the soldiers, and also promoted the status of nurses in people's hearts.

After the war, Nightingale opened a nursing school, which laid the foundation of nursing. It is worth mentioning that nursing later influenced Qiu Jin, a female revolutionary. She translated the nursing course for the first time in China Women's Daily, hoping that women in China could be self-reliant and liberated.

Secondly, cigarettes are produced on a large scale.

At that time, people generally liked smoking pipes, but in the Crimean War, cigarettes were distributed to soldiers as strategic materials. France stipulated that each soldier should issue 10 cigarettes, which was later increased to 15 cigarettes. Since then, cigarettes have become popular on a large scale and gradually become the mainstream of the tobacco market.

Third, use the weather forecast.

A landing operation of the British and French fleets suffered heavy losses due to a sudden storm. The military commissioned Neptune's Revell Discovery to investigate the cause of the storm, which produced the first meteorological map.

1863, there are daily weather forecasts in Europe. Since then, going out to check the weather forecast has gradually become the living habit of each of us.

In the same year that the Crimean War ended, Britain and France jointly launched the Second Opium War. However, the far-reaching impact is still in Europe. Later, the kingdom of Sardinia unified Italy and Prussia unified Germany, all of which benefited from the Crimean war that destroyed the European coordination established by the Vienna Conference.

The problems of the Ottoman Empire were not completely solved, which also turned the Balkans into a "powder keg" and eventually detonated the First World War.

War is an important factor to promote the development of science and technology at all times and in all countries. The two world wars in the 20th century and the arms race in the "Star Wars Plan" were all "by-products" derived from wars.

This once again verifies the law of "by-products" that we put forward before: in history, many events often produce many unexpected "by-products" during the development of the main goal, and the vitality of "by-products" is no less than that of the original "main goal".

Historical evaluation

1. For both sides, this is a war of religious fanaticism, for Russians, this is a war of realizing traditional ambitions, and for Turks, this is a battle of life and death.

-The Complete Works of Marx and Engels

2. The Crimean War was fought for Europe, not for the East; This is to fight against Russia, not to protect Turkey.

-A.J.P. Taylor's The Struggle for European Hegemony

3. The Crimean War led to the collapse of the metternich order painstakingly established by the Vienna Conference. The disintegration of the unification of the three eastern European countries made the moderate moral factors disappear in European diplomacy. Followed by fifteen years of troubled times, and then the stability is very unreliable.

-Henry Kissinger's Great Diplomacy