Dear Pericles.. apologies for not tweaking to the actual question.

I've done some reading on the Crimean war and this is how it seems to me.

1/ The War was very much about

a) Holy places in Palestine and the connections the Russians had with the Orthodox and the French had with the Catholics.

b) There was also the issue of Ottoman sovereignty in places like Wallacia etc.

If the British and French and Ottomans had lost, I envisage the following outcome.

1/ Vast reduction of Ottoman sovereignty and territory (a good thing)
2/ Increased Russian Orthodox influence in Palestine (holy Places).. (neither here nor there to me)
3/ Probable eventual conflict between the English/French and Russia.

I would not see such an outcome as being absolutely 'pivotal' historically in the way the battle of Vienna or the Battle of Tours were.

Your lack of focus on those 2 battles is most likely attributable to your lack of understanding of Political Islam. That's not a "Whack-a-Pericles" by the way, but you have said yourself you know very little about these things. But you ARE learning :) now you know about the reliability of Bukhari's hadith.

His method, by the way, was to trace each chain of transmitters in the packet of tradition, from different areas to ensure they all came back to the same originator. So.. a 'hadith' from Iraq must have the same chain of transmitters as the same hadith from Egypt.

A search of Bukhari for the hadith about Muhammad hacking off limbs and mutilating living prisoners gives the following results.

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/search.html type 'ukl' into the hadith search window to give the listings below.

001.004.234 Narrated Abu Qilaba:
005.059.505 Narrated Anas:
007.071.623 Narrated Anas bin Malik:
008.082.794 Narrated Anas:
008.082.796 Anas
008.082.797 Anas
009.083.037 Qilaba

They are various traditions of the same event. Each example has a different 'chain' but the originator is the man named.