Inkerman: "The Soldiers' Battle"

The battle of Inkerman, 5th November 1854 .

The British 47th Regiment (now known as the Queen's Lancashire regiment) try to push back the Russian infantry.

Britain entered the Crimean war 1854-56, to stop Russian expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean, threatening the route to India. Britain and France joined forces along with Turkey to stop this Russian threat. The Allies aim was to capture the Russian naval port of Sebastopol on the Black Sea and destroy it. After the success of the battle of Alma, the Allies could have taken the city, but the British and French were unable to agree on a plan of attack, they decided to lay seige to the city, therefore getting bogged down in seige warfare.

In the early hours of November 5th. 1854, a massive Russian army of around forty thousand men, launched a surprise attack on the British base but was eventually repulsed.

The battle was fought in a thick blanket of fog so that any co-ordinated command of the soldiers was impossible, the battle consisted of a series of individual, bitter, isolated encounters where the fighting spirit and skill at arms of the British soldiers and the elan of their French allies, carried them through to victory.

Due to the nature of the battle it later became known as the “Soldiers' Battle”.