“Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Thin Red Line” and “Balaklava”: The Crimean Campaign of 1853–1856 as the First Information War in World History and the Role of the Don Cossacks in the Battles in the Crimea and the Azov Sea

The Crimean (Eastern) War was not only the first major military conflict after the Napoleonic Wars, but also a fundamentally new phenomenon in the field of communication and public opinion formation. Thanks to the telegraph, the mass press and photography, it was conducted not only on the battlefields, but also on the pages of newspapers, creating media reality and conditions for the development of civil society. In this context, even the local success of Russian troops, such as the defense of Taganrog in May 1855, dealt a disproportionate blow to the enemy’s military myth. The purpose of the article is to show how the information component of the war transformed its perception in Britain, and to analyze the role of the Don Cossacks in creating one of these “media counterexamples.”