Battle of Inkerman
battle on 5 November 1854 during the Crimean War
The Battle of Inkerman was fought during the Crimean War on 5 November 1854 by the allied armies of Britain and France against the Imperial Russian Army. The battle broke the will of the Russian Army to defeat the allies in the field, and was followed by the siege of Sevastopol. The role of troops fighting mostly on their own initiative due to the foggy conditions during the battle has earned the engagement the name "The Soldier's Battle."
The Russian advance force attacked a fortified British hilltop and captured it, but could not hold it and was forced to retreat in turn. Approaching Russian reinforcements put the British in a critical situation, but French troops arrived to turn the tide, forcing the Russians to fall back.
Background
The allied armies of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire had landed on the west coast of Crimea on 14 September 1854, intending to capture the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. The allied armies fought off and defeated the Russian Army at the Battle of Alma, forcing them to retreat in some confusion toward the River Kacha. While the allies could have taken this opportunity to attack Sevastopol before Sevastopol could be put into a proper state of defence, the allied commanders, British general FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan and the French commander François Certain Canrobert could not agree on a plan of attack.
Instead, they resolved to march around the city, and put Sevastopol under siege. Toward this end the allies marched to the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula and established a supply port at the city of Balaclava. However, before the siege of Sevastopol began, the Russian commander Prince Menshikov evacuated Sevastopol with the major portion of his field army, leaving only a garrison to defend the city.
The public source identifies “Battle of Inkerman” as battle on 5 November 1854 during the Crimean War. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Battle, Inkerman and battle.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q770536. The Library of Congress control number is sh85066468. Authority coordinates are 44.585, 33.592. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1854.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Inkerman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.