The Battle of the Alma was the first major engagement between the British, French and Russians in the Crimean War. The Allied armada had aimed to concentrate in Balchik Bay, fifteen miles north of Varna but delayed due to bad weather.
Lord Raglan arrived in Balchik on the 5 September but found that the French commander, Marshal Armand Jacques Leroy de St Arnaud had already left. It wasn't until the 8 September, with the invasion fleet now strung out, had Raglan finally caught up with him. Raglan learnt that the French now favoured a landing at Kaffa, 100 miles east of Sebastopol. A conference the next day rejected Kaffa and Raglan, as well as eleven other British and French officers, sailed to reconnoitre the west coast of the Crimean Peninsula. They returned to the rendezvous where the rest of the fleet had gathered, forty miles west of Cape Tarakan. The site of the invasion was now in Calamita Bay, some thirty miles north of Sebastopol. The fleet proceeded eastwards and the Allies occupied the small port of Eupatoria on the 13 September with the main landings taking place the next day and continuing for four days due to stormy weather.
