WI: Cyanide in Sevastopol

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
During the final years of the Crimean War, the British, French, Ottoman, and Sardinian forces were entangled in the prolonged and bloody Siege of Sevastopol, having sought to pry the port and capital of Crimea from the hands of Russia. Before the Siege was over, the Allied forces and the Russians fought at Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman, Tchernaya, Redan, and finally the city of Sevastopol itself, covering little more than thirty-five miles in the span of a year, with over 230'000 causalities from both sides. The Battle would become a cultural staple of the period, as did the rest of the war, seeing both technological and hygienic advances, as well as radical changes in the thinking of many Russian and Russian subjected people. It's effects would also change the way wars were fought, many of the armies that fought undergoing large and sweeping reforms in the wake of the war. It was, in many senses, the first Modern War.

With the Siege of Sevastopol came innovative ideas on how to break the stalemate. One of these idea's came from the Scientist Lyon Playfair, who propose the use of artillery shells filled with Cacodyl Cyanide to break the stalemate. This was supported by Admiral Thomas Cochrane, and considered by Lord Palmerston, however was rejected by the Ordnance Department as being 'bad warfare'. Playfair would justify his proposal by noting the humane nature of gas as opposed to bullets.

The question is, of course, what if the Ordnance Department accepted Playfair's proposal, and fired Cyanide into Sevastopol? What would be the immediate and far reaching consequences?
 
I can't imagine how that could end well. Cacodyl cyanide is pretty volatile when it comes into contact with air and so you'd probably see too many accidents, both on the field and in the course of transportation, for the gas to be a viable weapon of war. Of course the army can dilute the mixture, but that would come at the cost of reduced effectiveness and I'd assume the Russians would just start putting wet cloth over their noses and mouths to mitigate the worst of the effects.

The use of gas might have impressed foreign observers of the war, however, and you might see McClellan proposing an alternate gas compound in the ACW, especially when he comes up in a similar situation, such as the trenches outside Richmond.

Even if the gas canisters had an actual military impact on the defenders of Sevastopol, it's not a given that the British and French leadership would have had enough men to actually exploit such openings before the Russians found some way to counter it, or bring in fresh reinforcements.

OTL Sevastopol was really only lost after the Russian supply lines were wrecked by British shore raids on what is now the Ukraine coast and the Don River, and the Crimean War only ended when the Baltic campaigns threatened to capture Kronstadt and torch St. Petersburg. So the use of gas in Sevastopol probably has a miniscule military impact on the actual Crimean War.
 
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