Colonel Robert Cadell

Photograph by Mayer and Pierson, Paris, 1856.

This hand tinted photograph is of Colonel (later General Sir) Robert Cadell (1825-1897) in the uniform of a British officer attached to the Turkish Contingent. Cadell was an East India Company Officer officer who commanded the Turkish artillery at the Battle of the Windmills in 1855 and distinguished himself at the River Ingur on 6 November 1855.

Desperate for auxiliary manpower the British Government realised that the Turkish troops could prove useful and a convention with the Sultan was signed in February 1855 agreeing that a force would be 'hired' from the Ottoman Empire and placed under British command. Principally officered by British officers, this force became known as the Turkish Contingent and eventually amounted to 16 infantry and eight cavalry regiments, six battalions of artillery as well as engineer and land transport units.

With the Turks serving the British in this way, it was only in the north around the strategic port of Eupatoria, that any sort of Turkish field force was maintained. Under Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander, they were successful in repulsing a major Russian attack on 17 January 1855. Little attention has been made to the so called 'Battle of the Windmills' despite it being the only one in the Crimea that the Turks fought largely unsupported. From behind defensive earthworks, some 20,000 Turks repelled 33,000 Russians, killing over 500 of them for the loss of about a hundred men.