"the linguistic legacy of the Crimean War - wonderful " Topic

March 28, 2014, is the 160th anniversary of Britain declaring war on Russia to formally start the Crimean War. The war was fought by Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire against Russia, mainly to curtail Russia's presence and ambitions in the Black Sea and Eastern Europe. It lasted until 1856, and was fought in several places, not just Crimea. But it's best remembered for just one battle, a battle that was vaunted as glorious and heroic by the side that lost it (but won the war) — and that has left us with some misquotations, three articles of clothing, and some lessons in accidental and deliberate miscommunication.

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A great article. I have emailed the author with a few minor corrections.

1. The protagonists in the conflict included Sardinia as a late-arriving force to gain a place in the sun..
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2. The Fenton cannonball photographs were taken by Fenton ( an attorney) but it was near the siege lines in Sevastopol ( where my grandmother was born incidentally ) and was not near or even close to the scene of the famous charge.
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3. Should you desire an often overlooked account of Balaclava, read Mrs. Duberly's diary entry, whose husband's letter to come promptly to the fighting was described by her as "Words full of meaning!"
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While we all know that Tennyson wrote the well-known "Charge of the Light Brigade" poem, he also wrote "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade" about Scarlett's more successful action against 2000-3000 Russian cavalry.

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And the poem itself:

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Jim

It is also worth noting that Kipling wrote a poem years later called "The Last of the Light Brigade" following a subscription appeal to support the veterans of the charge only produced 26 quid.

Where I live (in Victoria, Australia), you can easily spot the areas that were developed in the 1850s (and there are quite a lot, as that was when we had our first big gold rush) by the prevalence of Crimean War – related names, such as Alma, Inkerman, Sebastapol, Balaclava, Cardigan and Raglan. We even have a St Arnaud, named for the French commander. I assume that the same sorts of names appear all over the former British Empire.

AussieAndy

Similar collection of names is Southampton UK in an area developed at that time.

For many generations of British schoolboys, the real horror of Balaklava was having to wear the one your grandmother knitted for you using the odds-and-ends in her "leftovers" bag. Talk about dazzle camouflage……

Still, at least she left a hole big enough for my face, which is more than my best mate's aunt did in his. Good job none of us knew what a gimp mask was back then.

Derby to has several "Crimean Streets" ….then the 95th earned their first honours there.

Hartlepool, curiously enough, has, or used to have, a Plevna Street.

Paris metro (in fact the metro stations take their names from the nearby avenues):

(…associated with the name of Réaumur who was an 18th century scientist!)