"The Crimean War is one of history's most compelling subjects. A conflict in which Britain and France went to the aid of the Ottoman Empire to protect it from Russian territorial claims, it encompassed human suffering, woeful leadership, and maladministration on a grand scale." "Based on the diplomatic and military dispatches of the period, many of them previously unseen, this is the first complete account of a war that helped to shape the modern world."--BOOK JACKET.