Fanny Duberly was just twenty-five when her husband, Captain Henry Duberly, and his unit, the 8^th Royal Irish Hussars, were ordered into battle. Rather than remain at home, the avid horsewoman announced that she was packing her side-saddle and going with Henry to Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. The intrepid amateur war correspondent spent the next two years camped alongside her husband and his troops during the course of their brutal campaign.

What she saw and recorded in letters home to her sister shocked the English world, for there was little glory but plenty of death. Cholera slew elite officers and lowly enlisted men alike. Horses starved. The wounded lay untended. The dead went unburied. Allies argued. Incompetence was rampant. The Crimea was hell for men and indescribable for a woman on her own. Yet against the odds, Fanny Duberly rode through it all. She witnessed the battle of Balaklava, explored the ruins of captured Sebastopol, dined with lords, drank with soldiers and watched the ill-fated charge of the noble Light Brigade.

No account of the Crimean War neglects to mention this courageous lady and her own recollections were turned into a historically accurate book which was published while the author was still risking her life in Russia.

Rescued now from an undeserved oblivion, “Crimean Journal,” tells how cities fell and nations argued, while half a million soldiers died in a bitter and largely forgotten conflict. Though no great military male figures emerged, two remarkable women are remembered. Florence Nightingale made her reputation improving the medical needs of soldiers and Fanny Duberly penned this vivid eye witness account of an unnecessary war. Fascinating, remarkable, courageous, mysterious, sympathetic, Fanny Duberly was the Victorian heroine deluxe and this is the true story of her astonishing adventure.

In this climate of political complacency English expansionists treated their Indian subjects with contempt. Equally damaging was the unfounded rumour stating Indian princes would be forced to marry English widows so as to ensure a Christian succession. Worst of all were the reports that Indian soldiers would be forced to bite cartridges covered in pig or cow grease, a sacrilege supposedly designed by the British to break the religious laws of Moslem and Hindu recruits. When this political powder-keg exploded, the Indian soldiers revolted and murdered European officers and civilians. Thereafter a savage war raged across India pitting vengeful Europeans against outraged Indians. The carnage was indescribable.

In the middle of this politically inspired gang war appeared the “Heroine of the Crimea,” for thus was the author of this remarkable book known. Fanny Duberly had already kept a horde of guardian angels busy watching out for her welfare as she rode beside her husband, Captain Henry Duberly, through the recently concluded Crimean War, the same conflict during which Fanny had witnessed the infamous ‘charge of the Light Brigade.’ Now, with a new war afoot and her beloved Henry called to serve, the indomitable Fanny packed her pen and sailed to India alongside her husband and his men.

Though she was a hardened campaigner, the resultant 1,800 mile equestrian journey which Fanny undertook is a feat of endurance unequalled by any other 19^th century female traveller. Ordered to cross the Rajastani desert, Fanny rode alongside Henry and his hussars through a sun-baked wilderness where the midday temperatures often reached 119 degrees in the author’s tiny tent. The indomitable Fanny witnessed battles, dodged cannon balls, dined with captured maharajahs and survived a battlefield surgical procedure that left a three inch hole in her body. This book, available for the first time in many years, is the astonishing true chronicle of a brave woman whose eyewitness account of a terrible conflict still resonates throughout India today.