The Crimean War was the largest war fought by Britain in the nineteenth century. There were over 650,000 dead on all sides, with around 475,000 of these Russian and 22,000 British. The majority of casualties were by disease, as was common in warfare until the 20th century.
The war saw men march to battle wearing colourful uniforms and marked the transition between fighting with muskets and the more powerful and accurate rifles. It saw Britain"s last major cavalry charge against a European enemy; it saw trench warfare, espionage and stupendous barrages of artillery, the use of railways and the telegraph, war correspondents, hospitals, the steamship and the last hurrah of Britain"s Napoleonic War veterans.
The Crimean War exposed the limitations of Britain"s small army, which had no reserv
