Christians there gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. It forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. France and Britain welcomed that development, as the conflict was growing unpopular at home. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months, after the French had assaulted Fort Malakoff.
Smaller military actions took place in the Baltic (1854–1856 see Åland War), the Caucasus (1853–1855), the White Sea (July–August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854–1855). The front settled into the Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. A second Russian counterattack, at Inkerman (November 1854), ended in stalemate as well. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but the British Army's forces were seriously depleted as a result. After extended preparations, allied forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and marched their way to a point south of Sevastopol after they had won the Battle of the Alma on 20 September 1854. Aside from a minor skirmish at Köstence (now Constanța), there was little for the Allies to do.įrustrated by the wasted effort and by the demands for action from their citizens, the allied commanders decided to attack Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula. They moved north to Varna in June 1854 and arrived just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra.
Fearing an Ottoman collapse, the British and the French had their fleets enter the Black Sea on 3 January 1854. A separate action on the fort town of Kars, in Western Armenia, led to a siege, and an Ottoman attempt to reinforce the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at the Battle of Sinop in November 1853. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the Russian advance at Silistra (now in Bulgaria). In October 1853, having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia. In July 1853, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities (now part of Romania but then under Ottoman suzerainty). When the Ottomans demanded changes to the agreement, Nicholas recanted and prepared for war. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise to which Nicholas agreed. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that demanded for the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire to be placed under his protection. The churches worked out their differences with the Ottomans and came to an agreement, but both French Emperor Napoleon III and Russian Emperor Nicholas I refused to back down.
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