Students in AP European History are learning about the Crimean War, a war that led to the break up of the concert of Europe. Russian designs on the straits of Constantinople were met with a combined force of British, French and Italian troops. The result was a "Vietnam' war of sorts that took men and material. Russia lost over 400,000 men.
The dead were evacuated to the hospital on the Asia side of the Bosporus, at Scutari. There a wealthy Englishwoman, Florence Nightingale, traveled and using new methods of nursing helped to reorganize the hospital and save lives. She was called the lady with the lamp because at night she went from bed to bed comforting the soldiers. A poem was written about her by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled "The Lady with the Lamp."
The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room
