Crimean War
During the Crimean War (1854-1856), the barracks was allocated to the British Army, which was on the way from Britain to the Crimea. After the troops of the 33rd and 41st left for the front, the barracks was converted into a temporary military hospital.
On November 4, 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Scutari with 38 volunteer nurses. They cared for thousands of wounded and infected soldiers until she returned home in 1857 as a heroine.
Around 6,000 soldiers died in the Selimiye Barracks during the war, mostly as the result of cholera epidemic. The dead were buried at a plot next to the barracks, which became later the Haydarpaşa Cemetery.
Today, the northmost tower of the barracks is a museum.
Read more about this topic: Selimiye Barracks
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)