To say that the British operations in the Crimea was the most mismanaged war in the century would not have been an understatement. All aspects of the war were badly handled. Many soldiers died needlessly due to bad logistics and bad planning. Many froze to death due to the shortage of warm clothes and starved to death due to the lack of supplies. Many more died of injuries as field hospitals were not only not set up many times but they were not able to handle the number of casualties that occurred. The Allies, British, French, Turks, and Sardinians landed in the Crimea in 1854. There they fought the battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman while also besieging Sevastopol. The French finally captured a key position and the Russians blew up the fortress and retired. The Allies decided they too had had enough and went home. But in between there were acts of bravery and stupidity, all heading up to the most famous battle of its day, the Battle of Balaclava, out of which came the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.

One of the main things that caused problems in the Crimea was the disjointed command of the British Army. The Commander-in-Chief of the Horse Guards had no control of troops outside of England. The Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army had only command of the Bengal Army and not the troops stationed anywhere else in India. The army and navy had no method for combined actions. The Commissariat, which had control over food and transport, was not under the army, but a part of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Medical Corps didn�t report to the Horse Guards but to the Secretary of War in Whitehall. The Secretary of War paid for the troops, but not the Royal Artillery or Engineers who were under the Master of Ordinance. The whole army was not under the command of either the Commander-in-Chief or the Secretary of War but the Secretary State for the Colonies. Under this setup it was a miracle that an army could be put into the field at all. This system came about as the English people had a great fear of a standing army, always fearing that it would be used to lead a revolution against the crown. So checks and balances were put in so, not to have any one person in control of the army and thus too much power, that in the end the army was almost paralyzed when it was required to act.

The soldiers sent out to the Crimea were not the troops that had spent the last 40 years fighting all around the world, but units out of England, many of whom had never seen combat before. They were great looking units with colorful uniforms and perfect drill formations, but had never been in the field and had no idea how to care for themselves in battle and in camp. The supplies needed to support an army in the field; food, clothing, medical care and transport, were not only inadequate, but in many cases, nonexistent. By the end of the war, the British were finally ready to fight it. By then they had corrected their mistakes, but by then, it was too late to help the many who died of their mistakes.

The British landed on the coast of the Crimea on September 14, 1854. Because of the lack of craft capable of landing the troops, it took five days to land the 20,000 British troops. And with only 21 transport animals landed, that there was no way the supplies could keep up with the army when the troops marched off the beach. On the 19th, the force started marching toward Sevastopol. The army had no knowledge of where the Russians were or even how strong a force they had in the area. No one had bothered to find out. It was thought to be between 45,000 and 120,000 Russians were out there, a large difference. The Russians had thrown up a blocking force across the river Alma. The Allies walked right into the force without even knowing that they were there. The Battle of Alma consisted of the British finally breaking through the Russian line and the French turning the Russian left. The British suffered 362 men dead and another 1600 wounded. The army was too exhausted to move on. By the time they were ready to move, three days later, the Russians were recovered and ready for the next battle. The Russians had withdrawn most of their army out of Sevastopol and stationed them northeast of the city at the town of Balaclava. The port of Sevastopol is split down the middle and the southern area was easier to assault, so the Allies went around the city and set up south of the port with a blocking force north of the city to prevent attacks from out of the city from turning their flank.

The British decided to use the port of Balaclava, southeast of Sevastopol, to land their supplies in the area. No matter that the port was only about 1200 yards long and 300 wide and sat at the bottom of a huge cliff with only a narrow track up to the top. The British set up a defensive line just north of the port and started packing ships into the harbor. They built six small redoubts on a line of hills north of the harbor. These they manned with a few Turks and a couple of guns. Two were not ever finished and remained unmanned throughout the battle of Balaclava. South of this line they placed a couple of battalions of infantry and the cavalry they placed on the heights overlooking Sevastopol and the valley toward Balaclava. The Russians were northeast of this whole line, the British were in between two Russian armies, by choice.

The Russians opened the Battle of Balaclava by attacking the redoubts and quickly overcoming the Turks in them, most of whom fled. They then turned on the troops on the hills north of Balaclava. The soldiers there, by order of their commander, to escape the shelling, retreated to the opposite slope of the hill and waited. As the Russian cavalry assaulted the seemingly defenseless hill, the troops stood up and poured fire into the horses, sending the Russians reeling back to their own lines. There was then a cavalry action between the Russian Cossack cavalry and the Heavy Brigade under General Scarlett which the British also won. The Russians seemed to have a fear of charging the British horse.

This set the stage for the famous charge of the Light Brigade, under the command of Lord Cardigan. It seems that Raglans aide did not get along with Cardigan and thus, his orders were not clear as he shouted them to Cardigan, who had no idea that he was supposed to attack the Russians carrying guns out of one of the redoubts and not the main guns of the Russian Army on the far side of the valley. He thus rode his troops straight for the main forces of the Russian Army, destroying the Light Brigade as a fighting force.

After the battle, the British had won three out of the four separate actions of the day but didn�t control the hills around their port. The British settled down into the siege of Sevastopol and the Russians set about trying to unseat the British and French from their lines. Several more battles would be fought, both around Sevastopol and the surrounding hills. The British and French were able to hold off the Russians and at the same time launch many raids on the port. Finally, on September 9 1855, the port fell and on February 29, 1856 the armistice was signed ending the Crimean War.