Struggle in Russia

When the three brothers of Grand Duke Constantine marched towards Yevpatoria in the mud, Li Xiao and Nakhimov drove straight to Kerch in a light car.

As a time traveler, Li Xiao knew very well that when the coalition forces found that Sevastopol was difficult to capture, they would immediately shift their attention. This wave led by Napoleon III and Palmerston believed that Crimea should be fully occupied and Sevastopol Topol became an island.

This wave of people strongly advocated attacking and occupying the core areas of Crimea such as Simferopol. However, this plan was strongly opposed by Raglan. The mediocre British coach advocated continuing the siege and capturing Sevastopol.

However, the two groups of people had extremely different opinions and could never unify. In the end, after being at loggerheads, they could only compromise, and that was to turn to capture Kerch.

Historically, Kerch was very important to the garrison of Sevastopol. It was not only the gateway to the Sea of ​​Azov, but also could supply supplies to Sevastopol. Capturing this place will close Russia's last outlet on the Black Sea, and it will also cut off Sevastopol's material supplies. It can be regarded as killing two birds with one stone.

Historically, Kerch was not taken seriously by the Russian army. The defenders were just passing battalions and were no match for the coalition navy and army.

But things are different now. Kerch is extremely important to the Black Sea Fleet. After all, almost all the main force of the Black Sea Fleet has hid in the Sea of ​​Azov. Once Kerch falls, the Black Sea Fleet will really be useless.

Therefore, both Kornilov and Nakhimov attached great importance to the defense of Kerch from the beginning. They deployed about 6,000 defensive forces here and built extremely strong fortifications.

But Li Xiao still felt uneasy here, because Kerch was too important, and any mistakes here would affect his overall plan, so he took Nakhimov to inspect.

Three days later, when their group arrived in Kerch, they found that there was a big gap between the situation here and what they saw in the report. The defense of this extremely important seaport was lax, almost undefended!

"Damn it, Maxim Alexeevich, this is what you said about tight defense and everything in order!" Nakhimov angrily grabbed the commander of Kerch City Defense, Major General Manosevich, and went crazy. spray.

Because the major general was so drunk that he couldn't even pour cold water on him, and all his subordinates turned into drunk cats. Except for a major who dozed off and was still on duty normally, the other officers in the city defense headquarters were not Missing a trace means being hungover.

One can imagine what would happen if the coalition forces really came over. Nakhimov doubted whether these drunkards would be taken as prisoners directly.

This is true for officers. You can imagine what the soldiers are like. Anyway, except for a few aging veterans huddled together in a ball for warmth, there were not a few young and strong young men at all in the military camp.

According to the veterans, the boys all went out hunting because the food rations were not enough to fill their stomachs.

Nakhimov was shocked, because as far as he knew, the rations were absolutely sufficient, and the reason why the soldiers were not full was probably because some officers were drinking the blood of the soldiers!

In anger, he went straight to the storage warehouse, and sure enough, it was empty. Except for a small amount of supplies to be sent to Sevastopol, all the food that should have been there was missing.

This time he really broke out, and immediately ordered the military police to arrest a group of officers headed by Manosevic. After an interrogation, these scum confessed the good deeds they had done.

These bastards actually sold precious grain to Greek merchants. Their merchant ships sailed directly from Kerch to Kamish and Balaklava and sold the grain to the enemies of the Russian army.

Good guy, Nakhimov was so angry that such a scandal happened right under his nose. Unbearable, he immediately wrote a report to Kornilov and Grand Duke Konstantin, demanding that Manoshevi be severely punished. Qi and others, it would be best to shoot them in public to enforce military discipline!

But before that, Nakhimov still had a lot of things to do. The first was to rectify the Kerch garrison. In their current state, they would probably just run away if they encountered the coalition forces.

Nakhimov stayed in Kerch for the next half month, on the one hand to enforce military discipline, and on the other hand to urge the officers and soldiers to strengthen defense facilities. The so-called fortifications built by Manosevic and others before were simply a pile of rubbish, just in appearance and not effective at all!

Here I have to thank the coalition forces for their ink. When winter came, the top leaders of Britain and France knew that it would be impossible to capture Sevastopol in a short time. Therefore, some people advocate marching to other directions in Crimea.

Such as Simferopol, such as Kerch. But initially Simferopol was the key target, after all, it is the capital of Crimea.

However, as mentioned earlier, there were disagreements within the coalition. Even if the top leaders of Britain and France had reached an agreement and were determined to attack Simferopol, when they arrived at Raglan, the stubborn marshal refused to implement it, saying that the two countries The memorandum reached by high-level officials is only a suggestion, and as the supreme commander of the coalition forces, he has the power to reject it.

As the saying goes, Raglan directly chose to refuse if the foreign emperor's orders were not accepted. This made the French commander Canrobert so angry that he jumped because he was more supportive of attacking Simferopol. But the British refused to cooperate, and he had no choice. The only thing he could do was to complain to Napoleon III:

"The field plan formulated by His Majesty has been rendered inoperable by the British commander-in-chief who refuses to cooperate!"

Even years later, the French still resented the British failure to carry out the battle plan to march to Simferopol and occupy other parts of Crimea.

However, their anger was justified. Raglan did not have the right to reject this battle plan. To put it bluntly, this was a blatant disobedience to the command of the Supreme Command. Strictly speaking, it was a mutiny.

As British Prime Minister, Palmerston could have fired him immediately, but what is incomprehensible is that this Prime Minister, who has always supported the occupation of Crimea and even the dismemberment of Russia, did nothing!

As a result, the plan to capture the entire Crimea came to nothing. In desperation, the coalition forces could only take a step back and chose to attack Kerch. Just when Nakhimov was nervously strengthening Kerch's defense, the coalition fleet had already prepared Preparations were made to land at Kerch carrying 12,000 troops.

It's just that this plan also had twists and turns, and it took a long time to get through without success. The reason was still the internal problems of the coalition forces, but this time it was the French who were in trouble...