Author: Purple Brolly

The British participation in the Crimean War (1854-6) can be likened to joining in a playground squabble between little boys. The fiasco of the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ resulted from the issuing of a terse, ambiguous hand-written order given and received by men who disliked each other, and no clarification was sought. For this obstinacy, almost three hundred soldiers then died.

The War began between Turkey and Russia over access to religious sites in Palestine and the British and French joined in because they wanted to make a stand against supposed Russian expansionism. The religious question was sorted out by discussion, but they all decided to have a war anyway. Britain sent 26,000 men and less than 12,000 returned. Many men and horses died of disease or malnutrition, as the logistics were poorly thought out in the first year.

By the second year the British were better organised. The Battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman were fought, the seige of Sevastopol was staged, and eventually the Treaty of Paris was signed. This returned territory to its pre-war owners and banned Russia from having a navy in the Black Sea, for a few years.

(Image of Crimean War cannon: Henry Clark at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)

It is thought that the Angles originated in Poland but had moved to central Denmark by the 4th century. They then expanded their territory into Germany, the Netherlands and eventually Britain. Traditionally, historians have claimed that the Angles ‘invaded’ Britain en masse in 500AD, abandoning their own overcrowded country for the sparsely-populated, fertile lands of England and southern Scotland. The Angles, along with the Saxons who arrived at around the same time, were described as brutish, uncivilised tyrants who easily conquered the pathetic British peasants.

This is now disputed. Modern archaeologists can find no sign of any battles or sudden large-scale immigration. Instead, new excavations and computer analysis point towards Britain having peaceful, well-organised trading links with Europe for many centuries, resulting in a natural flow of immigration. Fort-like structures on the coast were more likely to have been trading posts. Foreign ornaments and jewellery unearthed here were simply purchases from abroad.

Furthermore, there is evidence that cometary fragments wiped out most of England and part of Scotland in 562AD, leaving it open to undisturbed, gradual settlement by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians after the land started to recover.

(Image: pixabay.com)