Russia wins crimea

Saphroneth

Banned
This is actually quite difficult - OTL the war was launched by the Russians to take parts of the Ottoman Empire, and the British and French were coming to defend those parts of the Empire but the Ottomans beat the Russians back before the Anglo-French even arrived!

The first question is to define what "win" means. For example, forcing the Allies off the Crimean Peninsula might count.


Given that, though, the second question is how the Russians overcome a quite considerable force disparity. The British and French have rifles, and know how to use them; the Russians mostly have smoothbores with Nessler rounds, which give them a longer range than most smoothbores of Napoleon's day but not a range comparable to a rifle. Worse, the Allied fleet is so overwhelming that the Russians don't even bother trying to fight - they scuttle instead of try battling the Allies - and the Allies also deploy the world's first true ironclads. (Sail-equipped, steam powered, armoured vessels capable of independent cruising and armed with powerful shell or ball guns.)
On land, the Russians face the problem that their army is opposed by modern, up-to-date, professional forces capable of killing them from easily twice their range and of launching uphill bayonet charges against fortifications - and fully able to supply themselves even over the beach at a 3,000 mile range from their ports.

So I think it would be easiest to use a pre-war PoD.

Here's a few possible options:
a) The Russians are the ones to invent Martin's Shell, an OTL Royal Navy invention, which means that a fort can demolish (set ablaze) wooden ships very efficiently. This renders Sevastopol much more defensible, and the same is also true of Kinburn and Bomarsund and other forts.
b) The Russians purchase very large numbers of Dreyse breechloader rifles, and follow this up with proper rifle training. Even if they still stand in lines and blaze away, this will make them much more effective than the OTL.
c) Heavy Russian use of rifled artillery, outranging the British smoothbore artillery and to some extent their rifled long arms.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
This is actually quite difficult - OTL the war was launched by the Russians to take parts of the Ottoman Empire, and the British and French were coming to defend those parts of the Empire but the Ottomans beat the Russians back before the Anglo-French even arrived!

- snip - .

Of course, as long as the Turks keep their own officers in command, that's true, as witness the Danube Campaign (having the Austrians threatening to intervene helped, of course); however, given the example of the Russian victory at Kars, putting a British general in command of Turkish troops is likely to end in disaster, especially if the British general is named Williams.

Best,
 

ben0628

Banned
If I'm not mistaken isn't there a chance that Austria joins on the side of Russia? If so, wouldn't that pretty screw the Ottomans on land? There's also the small chance for Russia to get the Slavs in Ottoman territory to revolt which would help.

As for sea, although British and French superiority obviously helped them in the Black Sea, yet I believe I read somewhere that they still weren't strong enough to get through Kronstadt and threaten St. Petersburg.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Austria nearly intervened on the side of the Ottomans OTL - indeed, it's considered one of the factors which led to the Russians giving up.

The Kronstadt one is tricky - remember the British and French were both building a lot of extra ships, dozens a year, and ships deployed in the Black Sea couldn't also fight in the Baltic. It was one or the other in a given campaign (and OTL they went for the Black Sea and Sea of Azow first.)

If the war had continued another year, the British and French would have followed up their destruction of Kinburn and Bomarsund with attacks on Kronstadt - now with about eight of the world's first ironclads, heavily armed, and supported by fleets of dozens of gunboats and mortar boats as well as plentiful ships of the line.

Kronstadt is a tough prospect, but not invulnerable - no defence is on its own, especially not in those early steam days when the attacker has multiple heavily armed broadside ironclads. The combined Allied fleets had shown the ability to knock out very modern forts (Kinburn and Bomarsund) with a few days bombardment which basically dismantled the heavy forts - and the British in particular had invented minesweeping, so even the mine belts weren't being very helpful.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
If I'm not mistaken isn't there a chance that Austria joins on the side of Russia? If so, wouldn't that pretty screw the Ottomans on land? There's also the small chance for Russia to get the Slavs in Ottoman territory to revolt which would help. As for sea, although British and French superiority obviously helped them in the Black Sea, yet I believe I read somewhere that they still weren't strong enough to get through Kronstadt and threaten St. Petersburg.

The Austrians threatened to intervene on the behalf of the Turks, although the Turks had stopped the Russians on the Danube front without a British or French soldier in the theater.

The Allied victory at Bomarsund was won by the landing force, a French infantry division that landed in the Åland Islands (which are offshore from Sweden, not anywhere close to Russian territory) and laid siege with artillery to the Russians at Bomarsund; Kinburn, of course, is on a sandspit at the mouth of the Dniepr, which could be bombarded from practically all sides and cut off from any replenishment - not unlike Bomarsund... Not something possible at Kronstadt or St. Petersburg.

Best,
 

Saphroneth

Banned
So, here's how I'd do it with ASB foresight but only using existing technologies. Let's say I have four years.

1) Purchase Dreyse guns. Ideally get the design and manufacture them domestically.
2) Martin's Shell for the forts.
3) Rifled muzzle loading shell artillery with good fuzes.
4) Institutional accuracy training for the army with their Dreyse guns.

Result: much more effective army, and even if not as good 1:1 as the Allies able to smash them to bits through numbers in any field battle. Forts able to stand off non-ironclad attack.
 
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