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The Crimean War revealed the courage of ordinary soldiers and the incompetence of the command.
Newspapers reported the shocking conditions in the army hospitals, the terrible organization of supplies: a load
of army boots sent out from Britain turned out to be for the left foot. The war solved nothing but it brought a
glory to the remarkable work of Florence Nightingale, "the lady with the lamp", who organized hospitals and
treatment of the wounded.
In India the British policies aroused a revolt in 1857, it was known as the Indian Mutiny; and it developed
into a national movement against foreign rule. There was much violence on both sides. The British brutally
punished the defeated rebels, which caused a feeling of animosity that later grew into the Indian Independence
movement of the twentieth century.
Queen Victoria suffered a great personal tragedy in 1861 – Prince Consort Albert died of typhoid – and the
Queen went into deep mourning, withdrew from public duties and lived in isolation for a decade. Her last
thirty-five years of reign were a period of struggle between the new Liberal Party led by W. E. Gladstone and
the Conservatives who were headed after Palmerston by Benjamin Disraeli.