7.1 Text Reconstruction - Europe in the Modern World Student Resources

Dubbed the Crimean War (1853-56) after the Russian territory on which much of the fighting took place, the conflict was notable for the incompetence, suffering, and brutality displayed on all sides.

Crimea was the world's first war covered in real time by newspaper correspondents, mainly from British papers, who could beam their dispatches to London and then Paris by telegraph.

That people could read about battles less than a day after they occurred gave the war an unprecedented immediacy to people in Britain and France.

At first, they cheered their soldiers with patriotic zeal, but as the conflict reached a stalemate and reports of hideous human suffering appeared on the front pages, public opinion began to sour.