Add MS 68935

CRIMEAN WAR: 'The Danubian principalities, Turkey, Greece and the Crimea, Bosporus and Dardanelles by W. & A. K. Johnston . . .'; Oct. 1853. Scale of main map 1:4608000; inset maps 1:42240, 1:143690, and 1:460800. Printed, with MS. additions. The main map shows the Black Sea and Turkish possessions in Europe. The course of the Danube is heavily marked with notes relating to the manoeuvring of the Russian and Turkish armies in Oct. 1853. Notes on this campaign are written in the upper left-hand margin of the sheet. In the space denoting the Black Sea, there are MS. notes of troop figures for both the Turkish and the Russian armies, in two different hands; both are dated 1 Dec. 1853. Figures for gun emplacements in the Dardanelles are marked. In the upper right-hand corner, and extending into the margin, is an ink sketch plan of Silistria on the Danube; in the lower right-hand corner a similar plan of Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea. The inset map of Sebastopol has been heavily marked both in ink and pencil to show fortifications and gun emplacements in plan. The position of the French lines, sketched close in to Sebastopol, suggests that the pencil annotations were not made before late Sept. 1854, the Allied army having landed in the Crimea on 14 Sept. The other subsidiary maps of the Dardanelles, and of the Bosphorus are not marked, with the exception of an indication of the Black Sea on the map of the Bosphorus. For a full account of the Crimean War, see A. W. Kinglake, The history of the war in the Crimea (1877-1888), 8 vols., and the separate volume of maps attached to the one-volume edition of Kinglake's work prepared for military students by Sir G. S. Clarke (1899). For plans and discussion which reflect manuscript sources released into the public domain during the 20th century, see Christopher Hibbert, The destruction of Lord Raglan: a tragedy of the Crimean War 1854-55 (1961), and Denis Judd, The Crimean War (1975). Purchased from Roger Mason, Dec. 1988.

Ink and pencil on paper, backed with linen. 516 x 420mm., on sheet 521 x 445mm.