Britain and Russia have been to war before. Ask the British fleet how that went

In the Baltic, London’s armada found that threatening St. Petersburg was easier than getting past Kronstadt

On June 14, 1854, the allied Anglo-French fleet dropped anchor off Krasnaya Gorka, a village 20 km from Kronstadt and around 50 km from St. Petersburg. Dozens of screw-propelled frigates and steam and sail-powered ships – carrying 3,500 guns and over 30,000 sailors – formed an armada the likes of which had not been seen since the Battle of Trafalgar. They stood by, ready to attack the capital of the Russian Empire.

The press boasted that before setting sail, British Admiral Charles Napier reportedly promised to have breakfast in Kronstadt and dinner in St. Petersburg. Riding a wave of anti-Russian sentiment, the British public hoped to see the Union Jack on the spire of the Russian Admiralty.

The plans of the British were not destined to come to fruition, however. Why did the formidable Anglo-French squadron back down in the face of Russian military-technical power? Why did Britain demonstratively refuse to fight against Russia? And how is the legacy of this 19th-century war being utilized by militaries across the globe today? RT explores this little-known chapter of the Crimean War.

Read more

Britain’s forgotten proxy war against Russia

The unknown front of the Crimean War

The war of 1853-1856 – fought between Russia on one side and a coalition of Great Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other – is known as the Crimean War. Although the main events unfolded in Crimea, the war actually raged across a number of theaters: the Danube, the Caucasus Mountains, the icy waters of the White and Barents seas, distant Chukotka, and the Baltic.

The objective of the anti-Russian coalition was articulated with utmost clarity and candor by then-British Prime Minister John Palmerston, who demanded that Russia be stripped of its growing naval power. Achieving this required capturing and destroying Russian naval fortresses on all fronts, as well as annihilating the Russian military and merchant fleets.

In the Baltic, the British targeted Kronstadt – the naval fortress guarding St. Petersburg. The plan was to seize this maritime gateway to the Russian Empire and subsequently force Russia to capitulate by bombarding the capital. Other targets in the campaign included the Sveaborg sea fortress, which defended Helsingfors (Helsinki), as well as smaller fortresses in Finland and on the islands in the Baltic Sea.

The British were not merely interested in Russia’s surrender. Following their planned victory, they wanted to strip Russia of Crimea and the Caucasus and hand them over to Türkiye. They also planned to cede Moldavia and Wallachia to Austria; transfer parts of the Baltic region to Prussia; return Finland and the Aland Islands to Sweden; and re-establish an independent Poland on the territories of the Kingdom of Poland and Little Russia. In short, Britain aimed to inflict a devastating geopolitical defeat on Russia – one comparable to the events of 1917 and 1991.

Map showing the boundaries of Russia and the Eastern European states.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

These geopolitical ambitions should come as no surprise; the coalition comprising Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire was, in itself, a formidable force. Moreover, Prussia and Austria – Russia’s recent allies from the Holy Alliance – each kept over 100,000 troops stationed near the border. While formally maintaining neutrality, they were in fact waiting for an opportune moment to share in the spoils should Russia suffer defeat.

One might blame imperial diplomacy for Russia’s lack of allies in the war; yet in other situations, it had no problem forging alliances with European powers. The crux of the matter was that, in the period immediately preceding the Crimean War, the Russian Empire’s power reached its zenith.

Read more

From Phoenicians to Franco: Why are these African cities Spanish at all?

In the early 19th century, Russia stood as the undisputed leader of the anti-Napoleonic coalition and the Holy Alliance formed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Furthermore, in 1849, shortly before the Crimean War, Russian troops suppressed the Hungarian uprising, effectively saving the Habsburg dynasty in Vienna. Russia was confidently emerging as a continental hegemon. This development deeply alarmed other European powers, prompting them to unite and join forces to crush – or at least weaken – Russia.

The war also had an ideological dimension. A dispute between Orthodox Christians and Catholics over the right to administer Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem rapidly escalated into a demand by the Archbishop of Paris Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, to “put an end to the Orthodox heresy of the Russian people.”

‘Progressive West’ vs. ‘Backward Russia’

The Crimean War is frequently portrayed as a confrontation between ‘backward Tsarist Russia’ and the ‘progressive West’. From a strictly technical standpoint, the armed forces of Great Britain and France were indeed superior to the Russian Army of that era. They were already armed with rifled muskets having an effective range of 250-300 meters, compared to the 100-120 meter range of the smoothbore muskets with which the Russian forces were mostly equipped. Moreover, the British and French navies already had a significant number of steamships and screw-propelled frigates, whereas Russia’s transition to these new types of vessels proceeded more slowly.

Does this justify the claim that the Russian Army was weak and the Russian Empire backward? If so, we find that the losses suffered by the ‘weak and backward’ Russia in the war were actually lower than those of its progressive allies. Moreover, in Crimea, where the main battles took place, elite Anglo-French units were opposed by standard regular units of the Russian Army.

Admiral Nakhimov at the Sevastopol Bastion, late 19th century.

© Illarion Pryanishnikov / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The true reason for Russia’s difficulties in the war was that the Russian Army was compelled to achieve several things at once: confront allied forces in the Crimea, maintain large and better-trained forces to counter the potential threats posed by Austria and Prussia, and keep its Imperial Guard Corps stationed near St. Petersburg to defend it from Anglo-French attacks. The allies, by contrast, could choose their points of attack and concentrate substantial forces.

St. Petersburg, as the capital of the Russian Empire, was naturally a tempting target for the allies. As British propagandist Friedrich Engels wrote in 1854, “The more sanguine portion of the British public expect shortly to hear of Kronstadt bombarded, the approaches to St. Petersburg forced, and who knows? perhaps even the Union Jack hoisted on the glittering spire of the Russian Admiralty.”

Read more

The ‘stab in the back’ that wasn’t: Why Stalin sent the Red Army into Poland

To this end, Britain assembled the largest fleet seen since the Napoleonic Wars, placing it under the command of Vice Admiral Charles Napier – a seasoned naval commander who received his ‘baptism of fire’ in the Napoleonic wars. Counting French forces, this armada comprised 11 steam-powered and 15 sailing ships of the line, along with 32 steam frigates and 7 sailing frigates; the fleet mounted over 3,500 guns and carried a combined crew and marine force of over 30,000 men.

The Russian Baltic Fleet was inevitably inferior to the allied Anglo-French forces in both the number of men and technical equipment. When Napier’s squadron approached the entrance to the Gulf of Finland on April 19, the Russian ships prudently avoided combat, withdrawing under the protection of the guns and forts of Kronstadt and Sveaborg.

It seemed that the Anglo-French fleet would ultimately break the resistance of Kronstadt’s defenders and proceed to bombard St. Petersburg. Yet, on approaching the fortress, Admiral Napier encountered a surprise prepared by Russian engineers.

‘I could do nothing with my powerful fleet’

“Kronstadt is the decisive point for any naval attack against Russia in the Baltic. Take Kronstadt, and St. Petersburg is at your feet, the Russian Navy exists no longer, and Russia is reduced to what she was before Peter the Great,” Engels wrote before Napier’s armada set sail. And he had ample reason to think so.

Established by Russia’s first emperor, Peter I, Kronstadt was a maritime fortress featuring a formidable system of forts, batteries, and fortifications that shielded the Russian Empire’s capital from the sea. The straight-line distance from Kronstadt to the center of St. Petersburg is around 30 km. The Russian command clearly understood the strategic importance of the fortress and had prepared in advance to repel Anglo-French attacks.

RT composite. Map of the districts of St. Petersburg, 2006. View of Kronstadt Fortress with a foreign squadron during the Crimean War, 1855.

© Panther / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

; P. Kopylov (publisher) / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Before the war, Emperor Nicholas I personally inspected the Kronstadt fortifications, and they were further secured. Consequently, in spring 1854, the Anglo-French fleet was confronted by granite fortifications arranged in multiple lines, engineered to deliver artillery crossfire, and armed with over 700 cannons.

Despite these advantages, however, this was a classic fortification strategy. While Kronstadt’s forts were formidable, the Anglo-French squadron had superior artillery firepower, making the outcome of the confrontation by no means obvious. Recognizing this, Russian engineers went a step further and undertook an unprecedented feat.

Read more

Russia opened an ancient tomb – and found a message for today

Russian engineers established the world’s first naval minefield to protect Kronstadt. In total, more than 1,500 of these “infernal machines” guarded the fortress from the sea. They were developed by academician Boris Jacobi – who created galvanic mines (detonated from shore via wire) – and Immanuel Nobel, founder of the famous industrial dynasty, who developed contact mines. Placed at a depth of 3.5 meters, the five-row mine lines (and later, 13-row mine lines) were a technological marvel of the time and proved impassable for enemy ships. (Now would be a fitting moment to recall stories about the ‘technologically backward Russian Empire’.)

Napier was initially unaware of the mines. It was only upon approaching Kronstadt at close range on June 14, 1854 that the British admiral was able to gauge the scale and strength of the Russian defenses. As Napier said, “I could do nothing with my powerful fleet, since any attack on Kronstadt or Sveaborg would have meant certain death.” After spending several weeks in the waters near Kronstadt and realizing that there would be no breakfast, not to mention dinner in St. Petersburg, Napier was forced to turn back. The fleet also left Sveaborg.

However, returning to England without any victory was not an option. While Napier had managed to constrain elite units of the Russian Army near the capital and disrupted trade in the Baltic, the ambitions of British command spread far beyond that. They needed at least a semblance of military success to return home with.

Doomed fortresses

Realizing the futility of the attempts to capture Kronstadt, the British fleet decided to plunder coastal villages. However, this hardly justified the enormous resources the British had expended. Thus, the allies resolved to direct their full might against Bomarsund – an isolated, unfinished fortress on the Aland Islands.

The Aland Islands on the map.

© Rei-artur; derivative work by Abhijitsathe / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

The Aland Islands hold a critically strategic position in this part of the Baltic Sea, being just 22 km from Finland and 38 km from Sweden. Russia seized these islands during its war with Sweden in 1808-1809. At the time, in the midst of a very cold winter, General Bagration’s troops traversed the frozen waters of the Baltic Sea basin, moving from Finland to the Alands and then to Sweden, less than 100 km from Stockholm.

Understanding the strategic importance of the islands, Russia began constructing the Bomarsund fortress. Yet by the outbreak of the Crimean War, it was only partially complete and had only a quarter of the planned towers and weapons. The garrison comprised just 1,600 soldiers; their ammunition was extremely limited. Once a forward outpost of the Russian Empire, Bomarsund now found itself completely cut off as Napier’s fleet appeared in the Baltic.

Read more

Inside Unit 731: A death factory, a secret deal, and thousands of forgotten victims (DISTURBING CONTENT)

The massive Anglo-French fleet approached the doomed fortress. Bombardment lasted several weeks before the Anglo-French coalition landed 11,000 troops, supported by dozens of heavy siege cannons. The Russian forces found themselves in a hopeless situation: Their artillery was far inferior to the long-range guns of the Anglo-French ships, and the invading force outnumbered the defenders six to one.

Despite these odds, the garrison fought fiercely. After another fortnight of intense fighting, on August 16, 1854, the Anglo-French troops finally breached the outer defense line of the fortress. By that point, the garrison had spent nearly all the ammunition, leaving Commander Yakov Bodisko with no choice but to surrender.

The British acknowledged the heroism of the defenders, and Bodisko was allowed to retain his sword while in captivity. Upon his return from imprisonment, a military tribunal deemed his actions at Bomarsund justified and commendable.

The garrison of another Russian fortress, Gangut (now the Finnish city of Hanko), did not wait for a similar fate to befall it, and blew up its own fortifications on imperial orders. Nevertheless, the success of the Anglo-French forces in the Baltic was mostly limited to these minor incidents. As British media noted, “English guns did not speak in the Baltic Sea. They whispered in Bomarsund, but the whole of Europe waited for them to resonate in Kronstadt and Sveaborg. One could not have dealt a heavier blow to Britain’s naval honor.”

A sketch of the quarter deck of the HMS Bulldog in Bomarsund, August 15, 1854.

© Edwin T. Dolby, lithograph by William Simpson / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Second attempt

British accounts of the Baltic campaign assess Napier’s actions in a rather flattering way, implying that though he didn’t secure any significant victories, his forces managed to tie down the Russian fleet and prevented reinforcements from reaching Crimea.

This theory is fundamentally flawed, since during wartime, Russia would have defended its capital no matter what. It’s hard to imagine the Baltic fleet abandoning St. Petersburg and making its way through the English Channel and Gibraltar, navigating hostile waters controlled by England and France, on the way to the Black Sea. Thus, the first year of the Crimean War in the Baltic was clearly a success for Russia: It distracted the Anglo-French fleet, which expended great resources without achieving significant military success.

Read more

What Russia’s military elite is preparing for behind closed doors

The winter of 1854-1855 proved particularly harsh, particularly in the primary theater of war, Crimea; the allied forces got bogged down near Sevastopol. The military challenges and the inefficient use of resources, including during the Baltic campaign, were so severe that Aberdeen’s ministry was forced to resign. By the 1855 campaign, the allies urgently needed to turn their fortunes around.

For operations in the Baltic Sea that year, they again assembled a massive fleet of 67 ships. Just like the previous year, they set their sights on Kronstadt, hoping to lure out the Russian fleet stationed there. However, they only stumbled on underwater mines. Four British steamers became the first victims of these mines, leading the Anglo-French command to realize that capturing Kronstadt was out of the question.

Following this, light Anglo-French vessels began raiding the Finnish coast and plundering local fishermen. Meanwhile, the main forces of the allies aimed to capture Sveaborg – the second most significant Russian stronghold in the region, which defended Helsingfors.

In August, the Anglo-French squadron approached Sveaborg with plans to destroy the fortress and incinerate the strategically vital Russian shipyards. However, after a 45-hour bombardment and firing over 20,000 shells at the fortress, they failed to inflict any substantial damage on it. Russian military engineers had set up impressive defensive positions.

The Bombardment of Sveaborg, August 9, 1855.

© John Wilson Carmichael / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

With no other options, the British and French had no choice but to leave the Baltic Sea by autumn 1855. This effectively marked the end of the Crimean War in the Baltic.

Lessons learned

Beyond the disastrous military operations, Britain also faced diplomatic setbacks in the Baltic.

After occupying the Aland Islands, Admiral Napier suggested that Sweden take them over. Following the resignation of Aberdeen’s ministry, the new British prime minister, Palmerston, spent all of 1855 actively working to draw Sweden and Norway – then united by a personal union – into the war against Russia. Britain frightened them with tales of ‘Russian imperialism’ while simultaneously hinting at the potential return of territories lost in previous wars with Russia.

Read more

The Cold War’s strangest diplomatic tool is back on the ice

In Sweden, revanchist sentiments were strong but pragmatism ultimately prevailed. The country declined to occupy the Aland Islands and did not sign a defensive alliance with Britain until the end of 1855. This was a disappointing outcome for London, which intended to open a second front against Russia.

Sweden’s pragmatic approach is understandable: Having suffered major defeats in past wars with Russia and lost the Baltics and Finland, it recognized the futility of engaging in another war with the Russian Empire on Britain’s behalf.

With its advanced military technology and strategic decisions in the Baltic, 19th-century Russia effectively anticipated the military strategy of the 21st century called ‘anti-access/area denial’. While the Anglo-French fleet formally surpassed the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Empire, it was paralyzed by Russia’s impregnable fortifications and minefields.

Today, various countries are implementing similar strategies. China has developed hypersonic anti-ship missiles known as ‘carrier killers’ to counter the US Navy, effectively closing off the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea in the event of war. Another example is Iran. While it clearly pales in military strength compared to the US, its missiles and drones enable it to control the Strait of Hormuz, making any US naval operation in the region costly.

However, the most significant lessons from this conflict were undoubtedly learned by Russia. Although the Baltic campaign was successful for Russia and the powerful Anglo-French fleet didn’t achieve much, the war in general ended unsuccessfully for the empire. It exposed numerous areas of governance that required serious improvement. As a result of the Crimean War, Russia undertook crucial reforms in military affairs, finance, economics, law, and public life. This ushered in a new and more prosperous era.