CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TURKEY: MASTERFUL MODIFICATIONS
Few of the informed statesmen, Nesselrode included, expected the Porte to accept the Vienna Note, after Reshid’s package of 20–23 July was known. Those who favoured it, for example, Buol, Drouyn, Bourqueney, Walewski, and Aberdeen and Russell, saw coercion of Turkey as the only road to success, especially without a Russian commitment to evacuate the Principalities. Clarendon hoped that the Turks would ‘behave wisely and accept quickly’, but he had his ‘doubts about these fatheads’.1
His intuition was right on the mark. By 4 August Stratford had learned of the Vienna Conference, was calling its aim of ‘fusion … nothing more nor less than moonshine’, and still wanted the (Turkish) ‘ultimatum’, a position that paralleled Ottoman policy.2 Five days later, however, telegraphic instructions arrived from Vienna to the three ambassadors with the word that the Turkish package had been completely set aside in favour of Buol’s scheme. Reshid was taciturn; Stratford hid behind the ‘unless another arrangement has been made’ escape clause, and both he and la Cour awaited the Caradoc, England’s fast steamer, which was expected in a few days. Turkish spirits were bolstered by the arrival of Egypt’s Alexandria Division of 10,000–11,000 troops, who camped outside Constantinople. By 11 August Stratford could confidently predict the Porte’s polite refusal of the Vienna project, and la Cour knew that Reshid would demand modifications and sent this information to Vienna.
Both a courier with the news of the Russian adhesion ‘without variants’ and the Caradoc arrived on 12 August. No sooner had Stratford and la Cour executed their instructions – Stratford with undisguised reserve, la Cour with hypocritical gusto – than Reshid devised his alterations as the only possible vehicle for recommendation of the note to the Turkish Council. The Council’s initial opinions on 14 August were three for a modified Vienna Note, eight against and seven abstentions. Reshid was ridiculed for even presenting the project, while Bruck’s desperate lobbying on behalf of the Note was futile, Ann Pottinger Saab is thus correct in noting that the real question for the historian is not why the Turks rejected the original Vienna Note, but how they came to accept it at all.3 As good an answer as any lies in their incomplete war preparations. Their official position a little later was that they would sign only under compulsion.
Reshid was still in a strong position between Stratford and the Turkish war party. The la Cour who counselled acceptance of the Vienna Note cancelled out the la Cour who offered the French fleet immediately and hence played into the hands of Reshid. Bruck was marginalized, hamstrung by his instructions and forced de facto to accept and even support the Modifications as the best expedient. Argyropoulos, who kept abreast of developments, was irrelevant at this time and not a party to any serious negotiations when the crucial decisions were made.4
The Porte’s decision, a compromise between Stratford and the Turkish hawks, was affirmed on 17 or 18 August by a Grand Council vote of seventy-six to nine – the nine simply favouring immediate war. The Turks agreed to a modified Vienna Note with two reservations: the Russian order to evacuate was to precede the departure of the Turkish ambassador for St Petersburg, and the four powers were to guarantee that Russia never invade the Principalities again for diplomatic purposes. This second demand, an escalation of the Reshid’s 20–23 July Ultimatum, flew in the face of Stratford’s objections on practical grounds.
The actual Modifications, consistent with the manifesto of late July, were virtually the same that Reshid had proposed on the 14th – a rewording of the Vienna Note back toward the spirit of his final note to Menshikov, which had inspired the original French draft. The changes specified the Sultans’ historic, spontaneous grants of religious privileges independently of any Russian influence; changed ‘letter and spirit’ of Kuchuk-Kainarji to ‘stipulations’; and, as in Reshid’s draft notes of 20 May and 20 July, restored ‘subjects of the Porte’ to the all-important clause that gave the Orthodox the same rights that other Christian cults enjoyed. The lone Turkish concession was to allow the mention of Kuchuk-Kainarji and Adrianople at all.5
La Cour and Stratford positively supported the alterations. Bruck, as well as other envoys, their regrets notwithstanding, accepted at face value that this was the most that could be extracted from the Porte in the direction of conciliation. If Norman Rich is also correct that the changes made a ‘farce’ of the Vienna Note, then what does this say for the Note, its framers, its backers and their disregard of their colleagues on the shore of the Bosphorus? The ambassadors in Constantinople had followed their instructions in supporting Reshid against Menshikov back in May, and the Modifications were a restatement of standard Turkish positions.6
Fuad Effendi, who remained out of office and behind the scenes, got back at Menshikov by publishing the modifications and an article in the Journal de Constantinople that bragged of a Turkish diplomatic victory over Russia. Bolstered by the Egyptian troops and a revival of Islamic self-confidence, the Turkish war party’s weight continued to grow.7 Stratford’s influence was on the wane again, since he had not yet delivered any direct British military support.
Diplomatic activity in Constantinople then died down as the Russian reaction to the Modifications was awaited, with one major exception. Argyropoulos started talking again with Mehmed Rüshdi and Mehmed Ali, as well as with Reshid and Rifaat, and this needlessly frightened the Western legations. The two Mehmeds, Turkey’s leading anti-Western hawks, offered a direct deal if the mighty Tsar would be truly ‘magnanimous’ and drop the Vienna Note, which no Turk would sign, regardless of Stratford. Argyropoulos, however, anticipating St Petersburg’s decision, disallowed the guarantees and the third modification with the all-important ‘subjects of the Porte’ clause.8
EUROPE: ANXIOUS ANTICIPATIONS
The Modifications, travelling by fast courier and telegram, reached Vienna, London and Paris on 25–26 August and St Petersburg late on the 28th or on the 29th. Word of Reshid’s initial ‘consternation’ with the Vienna proceedings and Stratford’s reserve had already been received everywhere by the 20th, so there should have been no great surprises. On the contrary, the rumours that Stratford opposed the Vienna Note and even threatened to quit if his superiors insisted on it, created a momentary political bubble in London over his possible resignation or replacement – that is, until his dispatches arrived on the 31st. Within the ‘inner Cabinet’, Russell, Palmerston and – when the chips were down – Clarendon stuck by their controversial ambassador, while Aberdeen wavered, and only the generally mistrustful Graham blamed Stratford for the mess.
On the other hand, Austria’s Lebzeltern and Britain’s Seymour had been hectoring Nesselrode about the occupation, and the diplomat-generals, France’s Castelbajac, Prussia’s Rochow and Austria’s Gyulai, were able to talk to Nicholas, as he was involved chiefly in summer manoeuvres at this time. There were some optimistic rumours about his intentions, but no confirmation until the end of August, by which time the Journal de St Pétersbourg had also claimed that Russia possessed as much sovereignty over the Principalities as Turkey did.9 Herein lay one problem.
The other was the Modifications themselves. Just as no one really expected the Porte to accept the Vienna Note, nor did anyone really expect the Tsar to accept these amendments. Clarendon placed odds at two to one against. Lots of people, including Buol and Napoleon III, were also angry over the Turks flaunting a European decision. Had Buol been offered a cast-iron guarantee concerning the evacuation in exchange for a ‘pure and simple’ acceptance, he might have been able to assuage the British and French, if not the Turks, with verbal assurances, but that cupboard was still bare. Buol and Meyendorff could privately treat the Modifications as an ‘asinine’ product of ‘the Rhetors of the Divan’, but precisely because the changes were trivial, if regrettable, they did not merit Austria’s withdrawing her good offices. Thus Buol sat between two stools again, urging the Russians to accept the changes and the Turks to rescind them. So much for the ‘Austrian Ultimatum’ as the Russians understood it. Buol also transmitted Reshid’s memorandum to St Petersburg, which it might have been wiser to ignore in the interest of the vaguely worded compromise Vienna promoted.
Napoleon and Drouyn were angry over the Modifications, but would not withdraw their fleet so long as the Russians remained in the Principalities. In fact, Thouvenel’s argument that the squadrons must enter the Dardanelles by 1 October, if the Russians were still there, became France’s working policy.10 Hence there was an implicit ‘French Ultimatum’ to Russia, not Turkey.
The English, on the other hand, were divided over the changes when the first telegraphic news arrived, but only the free-trader Cobden and his likes would assert that Russian rule in the Balkans was preferable to Turkish control and would not harm commerce.11 The fundamental problem that the Cabinet addressed was what to do if the Tsar did not accept the Modifications or did not withdraw his troops. Aberdeen, in touch with Brunnow as always, urged Clarendon and Russell to abandon the Turks to face Russia alone if they would not sign the Vienna Note, but would not pull back the naval squadron without Russian evacuation, so his position was untenable. Palmerston, on the other hand, now renewed his criticism of the Vienna Conference for failing to clear the Note with the Turks first. He wanted Russia to accept the changes, but saw no technical reason to be rash and cave in to uninformed French pressure, since the fleets could remain outside the Straits into November or even December. Clarendon criticized the Porte’s provocative and pre-emptive demand for a guarantee, but saw no chance of getting the Turks to accept the unaltered note, even if he argued: ‘we are to decide for them’. Rather the Austrians should press the Modifications on the Tsar – a policy that would bind Vienna to the British and French in case the Russians refused. Russell also moved quickly from condemning the Modifications to backing Turkey. Stratford, meanwhile, was ready to challenge the Cabinet to deny that his recommendations were inconsistent with solving ‘the Great Eastern Question’ on ‘fair and durable grounds’.12
The force of Stratford’s dispatches and Palmerston’s cool soon prevailed over Brunnow’s protests that the Tsar could not accept the amendments. On 3 September, at an inner Cabinet of five, Clarendon, Russell and Lansdowne all leaned to the French position concerning the fleets, and were even ‘more warlike’ than Palmerston. Russell argued that if Nicholas did not accept the amendments, Britain should back Turkey, since Russia’s demands were those of a military victor. Within two days Palmerston agreed with Russell that if the Tsar demurred, he should be summoned to explain his grounds. But since Palmerston simultaneously determined that the Russians had no legitimate grounds for doing so, he was asking them to provide London with an explicit pretext – what Clarendon would later call a ‘violent interpretation’ of the Vienna Note – to back Turkish counterforce.13 Walewski soon warned Castelbajac outright that the Russians had better not refuse the modified Vienna Note and explain their reasoning, or the Western Powers could no longer press the original on the Turks.14 Brunnow and Aberdeen simply despaired of the operational logic of the Porte’s diplomatic manoeuvres. These had now produced an implicit ‘British Ultimatum’ too.
Nevertheless, Clarendon still ostensibly hoped for a peaceful resolution, but would not be cornered into telling the Turks to accept the note ‘purely and simply’ or face Russia alone. He composed a lengthy memorandum, his No. 184, to Stratford in response to Reshid’s dispatch of 19 August. The Porte had had its chance in late June and early July to produce a compromise note first; the Modifications were essentially superfluous, since Clarendon’s last-minute changes in the Vienna Note safeguarded the Sultan’s rights; the evacuation was implicit in the signing. This much the four powers could assure, but the demand for a guarantee for the future was to be unrealistic and even incompatible with Ottoman sovereignty.15 On the other hand, already expecting a Russian refusal of the Modifications and holding the balance between the Aberdeen-Graham and Palmerston-Russell factions in the ‘Inner Cabinet’, Clarendon was also going on record with a pro-Turkish interpretation of the Note and desired Russian adherence.
RUSSIA: RESOLUTE REJECTION
Russian policy continued to show some flexibility toward Austria and began to resolve the annoying Sulina Channel shipping bottleneck at the mouth of the Danube. Then, on 22 August the Tsar promised to uncouple the retreat of the combined fleets from the evacuation. Six days later he prepared a contingent order to recross the Pruth, but the issue of the Modifications remained.16
History with its surfeit of errors now repeated itself. Once more Nicholas and Nesselrode did not await the British reaction before making a key decision. Nesselrode let Gyulai know on 30 August, when telegraphic news of the Modifications arrived, that the ‘subjects of the Porte’ clause was the chief stumbling block.17 When the full reports were in, Nicholas refused to renounce future occupations of the Principalities. Moreover, he agreed with Nesselrode that Reshid’s grounds for demanding the Modifications ‘compel us to reject them’.18 There was no thought of modifying the Modifications in order to protect the Greek Church in Palestine from the Catholic missions, where Nesselrode could and did raise a serious objection to the ‘subjects of the Porte’ clause. According to the line fed to the foreign diplomats on 7 September, the Tsar had ‘returned to conciliatory dispositions’, but Nesselrode, Berg, Seniavin, Kiselev and Orlov, that is, the relevant ‘Germans and Russians’ in the Tsar’s entourage, concurred that it was beneath Russia’s dignity to accept any changes. Operationally, however, these ‘conciliatory dispositions’ signified only evacuation in return for the unaltered note.19
In the light of the parallel evolution of British Cabinet thinking, the fate of the Vienna peace process now depended upon the nature of the refusal. Once more the Russians played into the hands of the Turkish hawks and aggressive Anglo-French imperialism. Under a general illusion that Russia was still in a strong position, and unwilling under any circumstances to admit a change of line, Nesselrode had his redactor-in-chief, Ksaveri Labenski, quickly prepare an Examen or analysis of the Modifications. Nesselrode’s essential goal was to demonstrate that these denied a legitimate basis for the entire Menshikov Mission, which had aimed to reaffirm the privileges and immunities of the Greek Church and Russia’s rights stemming from the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji.20 Despite Anglo-French hostility to Russia’s recent circulars with similar arguments, he hoped that the Examen would be persuasive in London and Paris, or so he wrote, even though it misrepresented what the Sultan actually was supposed to pledge.21 Jomini’s claim that it was written only for the Tsar and then inadvertently leaked is more than myth, it was an outright lie the day it was written by a Foreign Ministry official who had access to all the Russian diplomatic documents which this author has seen.22
The Tsar approved of the drafts on 6 September. Nesselrode announced the refusal and dispatched the Examen to Vienna on the next day.23 Nicholas clearly feared losing face. For example, in response to Meyendorff’s practical suggestion that acceptance of the Modifications would isolate Stratford and the Turkish war party and lead to military disengagement, Nicholas scoffed: ‘Never!’ and assumed that Europe would ridicule rather than applaud him.24 Moreover, in framing policy, he and Nesselrode also only heeded favourable news concerning the readiness of the other Great Powers to lean on Turkey, not the hints that Clarendon would pay attention to Stratford’s dispatches or public opinion. The Tsar in fact was banking on his upcoming trip to Olmütz in late September to attend Austrian manoeuvres and see the young Kaiser and was still thinking very much in terms of diplomatic or military victory.25 And there is no evidence from the Russian sources or from the immediate reports of diplomats who saw the Tsar to support the myth that he was ready to accept the Modifications until dissuaded by Nesselrode.26
Nesselrode actually was depressed. He, unlike his ‘August Master’, could see the writing on the wall: a pattern of Anglo-French pressure on Vienna to force concessions upon Russia and the eventual Anglo-French displacement of the ‘alliance of the three courts’ (Russian-Austria-Prussia) as the preponderant factor in European politics.27
BRITAIN: VIOLENT INTERPRETATIONS
The news of the Russian rejection with an explanation reached London by telegraph on 13 September, and Palmerston returned from the country the next day to confer with Clarendon and Aberdeen, the only two Cabinet ministers in town. Clarendon now offered Stratford’s compromise plan. The four powers would assert to the Porte that in recommending the Vienna Note, ‘they do not consider that … [it] … confers to the Emperor of Russia any right of interference … and they shall adhere forever to this interpretation’.28 The French hurried with this scheme as if they seriously hoped to pre-empt a rash Turkish reaction. And Buol, though not happy with the weak tenor of the British draft, supported it as the only means of binding London to a peace process.
Clarendon and Aberdeen, however, conceived of their assurances in the same way that the Porte understood the modified Vienna Note – a four-power démarche to constrain Russia. Moreover, an irate Russell, who did not take part in these discussions, was ready for war to stop Russia’s alleged expansion at the Danube rather than the Indus, unless Nicholas’s grounds for rejection implied ‘virtual acceptance’ of the Modifications.29 In addition, once the Russian rejection was known, The Times – the chief remaining bastion of dovish opinion – focused its criticism on Russia.30 This removed the last major societal obstacle to more resolute British action.
Meanwhile, Kiselev and Brunnow showed copies of the Examen to Drouyn and Clarendon on 15 and 16 September. The initial French response was to demand that the Vienna Conference refute the Russian interpretation, but Napoleon III and Drouyn then came around to the Austrian notion that the Examen could be treated as unofficial. Drouyn, however, had to admit that the most generous reading of Nesselrode’s analysis would restrict the Porte’s liberties regarding foreign religious missions in the future.31
Clarendon’s immediate reaction was two-fold: he was pessimistic regarding the peace process and satisfied that Russia was now ‘inferior’ to Turkey in their dispute, especially regarding the ‘subjects of the Porte’ issue. On Sunday 18 September Clarendon spent a day in the country and was in contact with Russell, who had just made a scathing attack on the plan to couple a four-power assurance to Turkey with the unaltered note.32 Then Stratford’s latest dispatches arrived, reiterating further Turkish war preparations and continued unwillingness to sign the unaltered note, as well as his fears that Western pressures could result in either a fanatical Ottoman government or a defeatist one. In turn, Clarendon started to argue that Russia’s interpretation made it impossible for the four powers to pressure the Porte to sign the Vienna Note, for themselves to guarantee its harmlessness, or for any Russian declaration at Olmütz to rescue it. He was ready to summon the Russians to declare what their pretensions were, but temporized and instead instructed Westmorland to show No. 184 to Nesselrode at Olmütz and ask the Tsar to accept the modified note.33
Aberdeen was still willing in private to propose a new, more explicit Vienna Note and to threaten Turkey with non-support to ‘bring her to reason’. However, he warned Brunnow that the only hope for peace rested in the upcoming personal negotiations at Olmütz and told him on 19 September that in the light of Russia’s interpretation of the Vienna Note, for Britain to impose it on Turkey would be ‘to inflict violence’.34
The next day Clarendon informed Colloredo that Britain could no longer support the original project, wired this message to Vienna and turned to two new matters. One was a French proposal to authorize summoning two French and two British warships to Constantinople. The other was a plan for a new Vienna protocol to serve as the basis of a new settlement in the sense of the Turkish Modifications. This could at least also tie the German powers in some form or another to the Anglo-French commitment to render Turkey material aid, if war broke out and Turkey was in need. Napoleon scrutinized the Examen, avoided Russia’s Kiselev, hedged when Austria’s Hübner tried to maintain the French commitment to the original Vienna Note, and allowed Drouyn to follow élite French opinion, which was in tune with the English press and Clarendon. Palmerston, re-experiencing the refugee crisis of late 1849, was already advocating revolutionary war against any Russian-Austrian alliance to partition European Turkey.35
OBSERVATIONS ON THE RISE AND FALL OF THE VIENNA NOTE
There was something strange, even archaic, about the Vienna peace process, with the juxtaposition of honorific concepts with hairsplitting over words in a world where telegraphs, railroads and steamships were starting to replace couriers, carriages, and sailboats. It is also interesting that when the diplomatic crunch came, the concerned Catholic and Orthodox powers, France, Austria and Russia – lands where clerical authority normally overruled Scripture – were willing to play lighter with words than Protestant England and Muslim Turkey, which were more grounded in the prophetic traditions of the Word of God. Pace Paul Schroeder and his brilliant scholarship, the ‘precise language’ of the various texts did matter, especially to the Turks, and they were the ones being asked to sign something as a reparation for a fictional offence or suffer humiliation and the occupation and possible loss of two rich provinces.36
Another way of looking at the fate of the Vienna Note is from a spatial perspective. The note was at heart a project of the French-German centre, with Paris representing the views of London and Constantinople, and Vienna standing in for St Petersburg. Then, in turn, the Russians, the Turks and the British weighed in with their own riders. Russia demanded ‘pure and simple’ adherence without any other conditions. Turkey insisted upon modifications with a prior Russian commitment to evacuate and a four-power guarantee thrown in to boot. Neither would give way except under compulsion. The British statesmen in their own minds required that Russia agree to the sense of the modifications, that is, repudiate what they had said for three months, or the note was useless. In this manner, the more bellicose periphery sabotaged the solution of the centre – a proposal which was certainly poorly conceived and even more poorly executed, but not an impossible starting point for further negotiations.
Had the Austrians really wanted the note to succeed – and they had more need of its success than the French who were in better financial and strategic shape – Buol should not have dismissed Reshid’s Turkish Ultimatum when advance news of it arrived on 26 July, a day before the Note was approved. It was a clear message that the Vienna Note was in trouble, if not doomed in Constantinople. Bourqueney’s original scheme to compel the Porte to accede in order to put moral pressure on the Tsar reveals the bankruptcy of the entire project, since the French were simultaneously aiding the Turks militarily. In fact, Buol should never have allowed Russia’s Austrian Ultimatum and ‘pure and simple’ notions to get off the ground, if he really believed in the chances of his project, since the British and French were bound to support a reasonable Turkish counter-offer.
Buol, however, was fundamentally and properly concerned with Austrian interests, and these required localizing any Russo-Turkish or Anglo-French-Russian war that might break out. To do this, Austria had to avoid petty bickering with Russia, keep its army in reserve, and continue to promote more versions of Drouyn’s compromise note and Bourqueney’s explicative expedient.37 The Vienna project thus served the purpose of buying time for all concerned.
Had the Tsar really been alert and wanted to avoid war, he would have accepted the Modifications with a few reservations as a personal favour to the young Kaiser, declared victory, evacuated the Principalities and waited for the uneasy Anglo-French entente at Constantinople to collapse. But the Tsar was neither very alert nor all that interested in avoiding war, and still thought in terms of military-diplomatic victory over Turkey. Nesselrode, as is evident from a comparison of his and Meyendorff’s letters, was totally a company man, completely committed to the line that his ministry had promoted all year. Boxed in by the nationalists in his own office, in the military, and at court, Nesselrode was unwilling to develop and present Meyendorff’s arguments for using the Modifications as a means of retreating with honour. ‘Je suis in very low spirits [sic!]’, wrote Nesselrode to Brunnow on 3 September,38 and proceeded to edit and dispatch the Examen, which finished off the Vienna Note.
British policy in September 1853 is still controversial. Several scholars have decried Clarendon’s concept of ‘violent interpretation’ as applied to the Examen.39 Professor Schroeder, for example, has focused on the three-day lag between Clarendon’s reception of the Examen and his dropping of even a collectively guaranteed Vienna Note. Schroeder’s conclusion is that Clarendon was motivated solely by domestic political considerations, especially Russell’s threat to torpedo the Cabinet. However, Schroeder did not refer at all to Clarendon’s prolix No. 184, whose arguments in favour of the Vienna Note were undercut by the Examen, or to his immediate dispatch to Cowley (16 September), that described the Examen as the death-knell of Russo-Turkish reconciliation.40 Furthermore, it was not Clarendon, but Aberdeen, who is known first to have placed the words ‘violence’ and ‘interpretation’ side by side in characterizing the Russian dispatch. And if Aberdeen, of all people, could tell Brunnow that it was violent, then operationally, in the context of September 1853, it was violent.
At any rate, Russia’s rejection of the Modifications and, more importantly, continued occupation of the Principalities constituted the most ‘violent’ of all interpretations of the Vienna Note.41 Turkey’s next ultimatum would carry a declaration of war.
NOTES
1.Nes. to Brw., 25 July/6 Aug. 1853 (TsGADA III/120); Cln. to Wal., 7 Aug. 1853 (AMAE PW 14).
2.Str. to Wst., 4 Aug. 1853 (PRO 352/36/6).
3.Saab OCA: 67–71: Saab’s hypothesis that Musurus’s exaggerations of British support for Turkey contributed to Ottoman resistence is an interesting mirror image of the old thesis that Brunnow’s alleged underestimations hardened the Tsar in his position. Her own account and the Russian sources indicate that the Vienna Note had next to no chance of being accepted by the Turkish leaders.
4.Arg. to Oz., 4/16, 14/26 Aug. 1853 (AVPR K 20).
5.CORR II.276, Incl. 3; 283, Incl.2.
6.Rich: 80. Rich never once mentions the central issue in the draft notes for the Turks and the Russians, namely Turkey’s desire to insert ‘subjects of the Porte’ in the pledge to grant equivalent privileges to the Ottoman Orthodox, lest Russia demand the same for the Ottoman Greeks as for foreign missions, as stipulated by treaty.
7.SRA KUB Dep. Konst. 1853 (25 Aug.)
8.Arg. to Oz., 24 Aug./5 Sept. 3/15 Sept. 1853 (AVPR K 20); Lac. to Drn., 5 Sept. 1853 (AMAE CP Turq. 315).
9.Die Zeit, 16 Aug. 1853 (as in CORR II.296).
10.Drn.-Wal. correspondence, 19–20 Aug. 1853 (FR 19, AMAE CP Angl. 691).
11.Seton-Watson BE: 314–15.
12.In addition to the Ab.-Cln.-Rus.-Plm. exchanges of 26–29 Aug. (AbC X, CIDp. c. 3, PRo 30/22/11A), Str. to LStr., LStr. to Str., 31 Aug., 6 Sept. 1853 (Lane-Poole II: 299, 303).
13.Cf. the brilliant insights of Schroeder AGBCW: 64–5.
14.Wal. to Ctb., 7 Sept. 1853 (AMAE PA PC 2).
15.Cln. to Str., 10 Sept. 1853 (CORR II.328).
16.Nes. to Mdf., draft; to Nich. I, 25 Aug/6 Sept. 1853 (AVPR K 148).
17.Lbz. to Buol, 1 Sept. 1853 (HHSA PA X 36).
18.‘… doivent nous engager à les refuser’: Nes. to Nich. I, Nich. I gloss, 24 Aug./5 Sept. 1853 (AVPR K 30).
19.Ctb., Brq. to Drn., 7, 13 Sept. 1853 (AMAE CP Rus. 210, Aut. 451)., Lbz. to Buol, 19 Sept 1853 (HHSA PA X 36).
20.ZP II.18.
21.Nes. to Brw., pr., 22 Aug./3 Sept., 29 Aug./ 10 Sept. 1853 (TsGADA III/115); it omits the crucial word spiritual, where the Sultan promises to uphold the immunities of the Orthodox Church.
22.Jomini: 214–17; cf. Curtiss RCW: 163–4, Schiemann IV: 298. Monnier figured that Nesselrode foresaw when he dispatched the Examen that it would torpedo the Vienna peace process and/or was trying to avoid disgrace, but real evidence for either contention is lacking:p. 98.
23.AVPR K 469 (1853) 148.
24.Mdf. to Nes., Nich. I gloss, 20 Aug./1 Sept., 26 Aug./7 Sept. 1853 (AVPR K 148).
25.Nes. to Mdf., 20 Aug./1 Sept., 29 Aug./10 Sept. 1853 (NLP X).
26.Rumours to this effect circulated as early as 23 September: PRO FO 65/435 (Du Plat, from Warsaw, to Cln.). Walker (pp. 231–3) cites Greville and Beust, but the former’s memoires do not mention any such advice on Nesselrode’s part, and the latter is confusing. Accordingly Nesselrode stated much later he had convinced Nicholas not to accept ‘die Wiener Propositionen’ – a term never used by contemporaries for the Turkish Modifications: Friedrich Ferdinand Graf von Beust, Aus Drei Viertel-Jarhhunderten (2 vols, Stuttgart 1887), I: 196.
27.Nes. to Brw., Mdf., 22 Aug./3 Sept., 29 Aug./10 Sept. 1853 (TsGADA III/115, NLP X).
28.Wal. to Drn., 14 Sept. 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 691).
29.Rus. to Ab., 15 Sept. 1853 (AbC X).
30.On 3 September The Times agreed with the French public criticism of the Turks on account of the Modifications with one caveat: ‘unless’ the differences between Russia and Turkey ‘are greater than we think’. On the 14th and 15th The Times lambasted the Tsar for his ‘unscrupulous policy’, masked by ‘an appeal to the transcendental rights of superior power’, and claimed that both sides had the right to make modifications.
31.Hatzfeld to Mnt., 21 Sept. 1853 (AGK II.1).
32.Cln. to Cwl., Str., 16–17 Sept. 1853 (ClDp. c. 126); Schroeder AGBCW: 70–1.
33.Wal. to Drn., Thv., 19–20 Sept. 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 691, PA PT 20); Cln. to Wst., 20 Sept. 1853 (CORR II.352).
34.Brw. to Nes., 9/21 Sept. 1853 (AVPR K 75).
35.Plm. to Cln., 21 Sept. 1853 (ClDp. c. 3).
36.Schroeder AGBCW: 53.
37.Buol. to Lbz., Brk., 15, 19 Sept. 1853 (AGK I.1); cf. Schroeder AGBCW: 41–7.
38.TsGADA III/115.
39.Schroeder AGBCW: 69–72; Curtiss RCW: 163–6; Rich: 78–80.
40.ClDp. c. 126.
41.Cf. Plm. to Herbert, 21 Sept. 1853 (Ashley II: 37–40).