ABSTRACT
While secondary in importance and often overshadowed by the events in the Crimea, the Caucasus theatre of operations offers a wealth of knowledge to anyone studying the Crimean War from a military perspective. Eastern Anatolia was the only region where Russian forces proved decisively victorious and the Separate Corps of the Caucasus was the only part of the Russian army that successfully took the offensive and achieved important victories. In Nicholas I's army, where initiative was scarce and freedom of action was frowned upon, the veterans of the Caucasus, hardened in the protracted guerrilla war against the Caucasus mountaineers, were a rare example of initiative and independent decision-making. In a mountainous region with poor communications and a distinctly separate operational axis, this ability to seize the initiative gave the Corps a decisive advantage against the Ottoman Anatolian Army plagued with chronic issues in command and control. While the victories in the Caucasus only partially compensated Russian defeats elsewhere, the effective implementation of mission command on the operational level was an early sign of the new developments in the art of war, which the Prussian armies would later demonstrate on a grander scale in the Wars of German Unification.
