William Howard Russell 1850. Initially sent by editor John Delane to Malta to cover British support for the Ottoman Empire against Russia in 1854, Russell despised the term "war correspondent" but his coverage of the conflict brought him international renown, and Florence Nightingale later credited her entry into wartime nursing to his reports. The Crimean medical care, shelter and protection of all ranks by Mary Seacole was also publicised by Russell and by other contemporary journalists, rescuing her from bankruptcy. Russell was described by one of the soldiers on the frontlines thus: "a vulgar low Irishman, [who] sings a good song, drinks anyone's
Crimean War been beaten on the Crimean peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness." The Crimean War marks the demise of the Concert of Europe, the balance-of-power system that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and which had included France, Russia, Austria and the United Kingdom. According to historian Shepard Clough, the war: This view of 'diplomatic drift' as the cause of the war was first popularised by A. W. Kinglake, who portrayed the British as victims of newspaper sensationalism and duplicitous French and