Chivalry in Chains: Prisoners in the Crimean War
During the Crimean War soldiers died in appalling conditions, but the treatment of enemy prisoners was surprisingly humane.
The Crimean War has been called ‘the first modern war’, a ‘quagmire’ due to its abominably vicious fighting, with casualties inflicted as much by disease, neglect, and appalling logistics as by munitions. Yet some Russian historians have also called it ‘the last chivalrous war’, and not just because of its unofficial truces, when English, French, and Russian soldiers exchanged cigarettes for rough Russian makhorka, or brandy for vodka, or when, on 13 July 1855, allied shelling paused at Sevastopol to allow the Russian admiral Pavel Nakhimov a dignified funeral. The ‘chivalry’ was also evidenced in the lack of hatred between its belligerents – the British, French, and Ottomans distrusted one another more than they disliked the Russians – and in the humane, even generous, treatment of prisoners of war.
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