Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy on 12 May 1829. Nightingale will one day aid soldiers in the Crimean War and reform nursing, statistics, and the War Office. Image: Photograph of Florence Nightingale (1858). This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

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Lara Kriegel, “On the Death—and Life—of Florence Nightingale, August 1910″

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Arlene Young, “The Rise of the Victorian Working Lady: The New-Style Nurse and the Typewriter, 1840-1900″

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Britain enters the conflict on 28 March 1854. Image: Photograph of Cornet Henry John Wilkin, by Roger Fenton (1855). Wilkin survived the Charge of the Light Brigade. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g09124. The image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Stefanie Markovits, "On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade"

In 1854 eleven of Cunard’s steam ships were requisitioned to serve as troop carriers during the Crimean War, which resulted in the service to Boston being suspended for two years. Exact dates unknown; if you have information about the correct date, please email felluga@purdue.edu with this information. Image: Britannia of 1840 The first Cunard liner built for the transatlantic service, RMS Brittania. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.

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On 28 March 1854, Britain declares war against Russia, thus entering the Crimean War. Image: Russo-British skirmish during Crimean War (anonymous plate). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

In 1854, in defense of the Turks and of British access to eastern trade routes, Britain entered into war in the Crimea. The two-year campaign represented the nation’s first major military engagement since the end of the Napoleonic wars. It thus sheds light on mid-Victorian attitudes towards national identity, offering a counter-narrative to views of the 1850s dominated by responses to the Great Exhibition of 1851. As literary and visual representations of the war reveal, reactions to this conflict were both more nuanced and more ambivalent than our preconceptions about Victorian jingoism might anticipate.

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Stefanie Markovits, "On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade"

On 25 October 1854, British forces undertook the charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava. Image: Tinted lithograph showing the embarkation of sick persons at the harbor in Balaklava" (William Simpson, artist; Paul & Dominic Colnaghi & Co., publishers, 24 April 24 1855). This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.05686. The image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

No other engagement of the war has stuck so vividly in the popular consciousness, aided by Tennyson's poem of the same name, by far the best-remembered cultural product of the war. On the morning of October 25th, 1854, over six hundred British men rode the wrong way down a “valley of death” (so christened first by The Times and later by Tennyson) as enemy guns attacked from all sides. Not two hundred made it out alive. The charge resulted from a series of miscommunications between Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, and Lord Lucan, the Commander of the Cavalry. Both Tennyson’s poem and many other contemporary responses to the charge suggest that reactions to this event were deeply conflicted, expressing real bewilderment about how to integrate it into preexisting models of patriotic feeling. Moreover, a new form of heroism grew out of the bewildering experience of the Light Brigade’s defeat—and a new sense of a national identity that was based in part on this new heroism.

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Stefanie Markovits, "On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade"

Florence Nightingale landed at Scutari one day before the Battle of Inkerman on 4 November 1854. Accompanied by her band of nurses, Florence Nightingale will become the great heroine of the Crimean War. Image: Photograph of Florence Nightingale (1858). This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

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Lara Kriegel, “On the Death—and Life—of Florence Nightingale, August 1910″

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Stefanie Markovits, “On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade”

On 30 March 1856, signing of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Crimean War. Image: Treaty of Paris, the participants (Contemporary woodcut, published in Magazin Istoric, 1856). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Stefanie Markovits, "On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade"

On 13 August 1910, Florence Nightingale passed away at the age of ninety due to heart failure. Although invalided since the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale’s fame continued to grow throughout her lifetime. Newspapers across the English-speaking world covered her passing with great interest. Image: Photograph of Florence Nightingale (1858). This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

Articles

Lara Kriegel, “On the Death—and Life—of Florence Nightingale, August 1910″