Original Item. Only One Available. This is a tremendously scarce cannon plaque taken from a giant bronze cannon at Sevastopol, Crimea. The plaque is cast in relief with Royaltyal Arms and cipher and crescent, military trophies, flags and Turkish orders, from the era of Sultan Abdul Hamid II The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The plaque is a bit warped from age but displays beautifully.

The plaque measures roughly 11 x 14”. The cipher at the top is heavily worn and the Arabic characters are difficult to discern. As this example was taken from a cannon in Sevastopol, Crimea, it is certainly one to have been used during the Crimean War, during which Sevastopol served as a major naval base, being the location of the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855).

This is a tremendously scarce piece of Crimean War history, ready for further research and display!

The Siege of Sevastopol (at the time called in English the Siege of Sebastopol) lasted from October 1854 until September 1855, during the Crimean War. The allies (French, Sardinian, Ottoman, and British) landed at Eupatoria on 14 September 1854, intending to make a triumphal march to Sevastopol, the capital of the Crimea, with 50,000 men. Major battles along the way were Alma (September 1854), Balaklava (October 1854), Inkerman (November 1854), Tchernaya (August 1855), Redan (September 1855), and, finally, Malakoff (September 1855). During the siege, the allied navy undertook six bombardments of the capital, on 17 October 1854; and on 9 April, 6 June, 17 June, 17 August, and 5 September 1855.

The siege of Sevastopol is one of the last classic sieges in history. The city of Sevastopol was the home of the Tsar's Black Sea Fleet, which threatened the Mediterranean. The Russian field army withdrew before the allies could encircle it. The siege was the culminating struggle for the strategic Russian port in 1854–55 and was the final episode in the Crimean War.

During the Victorian Era, these battles were repeatedly memorialized. The siege of Sevastopol was the subject of Crimean soldier Leo Tolstoy's Sebastopol Sketches and the subject of the first Russian feature film, Defence of Sevastopol. The Boulevard de Sébastopol, a major artery in Paris, was named for the victory in the 1850s, while the Battle of Balaklava was made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Robert Gibb's painting The Thin Red Line. A panorama of the siege itself was painted by Franz Roubaud.

Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months, after the French had assaulted Fort Malakoff. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed the development, owing to the conflict's domestic unpopularity. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war and forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea.[18] This hampered the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and in the aftermath of that conflict, Russia moved to reconstitute its naval strength and fortifications in the Black Sea.