Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare

The Crimean War was the greatest international crisis of the Victorian era, and a modern war of rifles, railroads and telegraphs. As it raged, two writers embedded in the conflict-the young Russian officer Lev Tolstoy, and William Howard Russell, an Irish correspondent for The Times-brought the horrors of trench warfare home to the public for the first time. Crimea transformed how we understand war. Stripping away the romanticism of the Napoleonic era, Tolstoy and Russell exposed government...