PART SIX
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES: I – THE EMPERORS
The Crimean War, as a ‘modern’ war, was not an isolated event, but one waiting to be fought in some fashion in the light of the 1848–49 crises, the Bonapartist challenge to the 1815 settlement, the Anglo-Russian ‘great game’, and the legacy of Russo-Turkish hostilities. Nevertheless, the outbreak of this war was especially the result of the power, policies and personality of an autocrat, who exhibited plenty of ‘ill will’ as well as pride and poor judgement, and who, like his Western counterparts, understood the implications of his armed diplomacy:1 Nicholas I is thus in the company of three other nineteenth-century strong men without whom certain European wars would have been inconceivable: Napoleon I, Napoleon III and Bismarck.
A review of the role of several other key figures only points to the central role of Nicholas I. Twice when La Valette threatened to use warships in the Holy Places dispute, Louis Napoleon followed British counsels of moderation. When Fuad, Mehmed Ali and Omer Pasha provoked Austria and Russia by attempting to extend Ottoman power into Montenegro, all the Great Powers restrained the Turks. When Rose, Napoleon, Palmerston and Russell first wanted to send the fleets to Turkish waters, Aberdeen, Graham, Clarendon and Stratford, supported by a wide body of influential Englishmen and other Europeans, held back. Stratford and the diplomatic community at Constantinople reined in the Turkish war party for five months after the Menshikov Mission flopped.
Nicholas, on the other hand, served notice that he would defeat the Turks by diplomacy or arms and gave the other powers the choice of joining him or stopping him. His repudiation of Menshikov’s earlier advice to seize an Asian province or port, rather than the Principalities, or Orlov’s compromise project shows that even the top Russian nationalists could not alter the course. Moreover, the Tsar knew what British and French policy was concerning naval action in the Black Sea when he gave the orders that led to Sinope.
Explanations of the other powers’ support of Turkey and of their willingness to use confrontational diplomacy against Russia unfailingly leads us to the same spot: Nicholas’s refusal to evacuate the Principalities except on his own terms. Reshid’s proposals in themselves always appeared perfectly acceptable to most Western and Central Europeans who wished to preserve the Ottoman Empire and were only set aside as impractical in the light of the peace process or Nicholas’s prestige needs.
What of that other emperor, Napoleon III? Did he ‘probably desire war’, as the even-handed Bernadotte Schmitt concluded?2 The role of the new Napoleon is peculiarly problematic because he is often seen as having initiated the quarrel in a manner calculated to enhance his power in France and Europe, while the escalated Anglo-French goals were essentially British ones. In fact, the two emperors, except for their pride of office, could not have been more different in 1852–53. Napoleon inherited and intensified France’s forward policy concerning the Holy Places and tolerated la Valette’s hyperbole, but would compromise and not let his legation in Constantinople determine his policy. Nicholas’s response to alleged Turkish chicanery was to allow the French gains in a few shrines in order to justify his own enhanced demands for the protectorate. Neither wished to be defrauded, but Nicholas would not listen to the combined voices of Europe. Napoleon did not pick the fight over his own imperial title or the number III. Nicholas did. Napoleon, was careful not to run the risk of another humiliation for France in an Eastern crisis as in 1840–41. Nicholas set the stage for a greater humiliation than in the 1849 refugee crisis.
Each wished to rule the pre-eminent power on the continent, but the insecure Napoleon sought the appearance of prudence in foreign policy and sound relations with England – the only state that could hurt him. Nicholas felt somewhat insecure as of 1848, due to domestic events outside Russia, but was trigger-happy with his diplomatic offers and designs. Napoleon’s ‘ideas’ for a Europe of nations were an inherent threat to Russia’s Western provinces, but his normal probing tactic was to jab, feint or insinuate, as with Belgium, but then pull back or make a bargain. His reaction to the coincidence of the culmination of the disputes over the Holy Places and his imperial title in late 1852 was to capitalize on British and Austrian wariness of Nicholas’s agenda for the Ottoman Christians. Nicholas’s reaction was to push his potential allies against French aggression into the Franco-Turkish camp. When the chips were down in 1853–54, Napoleon preferred the security of entente with Austria and détente with Prussia to his ‘ideas’, whereas Nicholas opted for his illusions about the Ottoman Christians and the ‘Holy Alliance’ over his real community of interests with Austria.3
Napoleon had a peculiar penchant in 1852–53 for making a point with battleships in the Mediterranean, but to single out the Charlemagne and Tripoli incidents for escalating the Holy Places dispute, as does Temperley, without noting Russia’s standing threat to use the army, is one-sided.4 Moreover, Napoleon’s decisive naval decisions in March and December 1853 were measured reactions to Russian escalations, whereby France honoured commitments to Turkey and hoped first to obtain and then to reinforce the English alliance. The British did not need to send any ships in March, because Stratford with a squadron at Malta was still worth more than la Cour with one at Salamis. On the other hand, to have withheld the combined squadrons after the engagement at Sinope would have compelled the Sultan to make peace on Russian terms. Napoleon certainly did not shrink from international violence, but he was readier than most British to seek an accommodation with the Russians from September 1853 until the Crimean War ended.
Nicholas did not need a foreign alliance to consolidate domestic power and thus did not have to listen to anybody. His initial mobilization was connected with aggressive designs on Turkey, including the seizure of the Principalities and Dobrudja if he did not get his way, and should not be discounted by a misreading of Nicholas’s crucial memorandum.5
The most dovish, realistic judgement on Nicholas I is that he planned a war with Turkey to expel her from Europe and/or partition her with the other Great Powers, but that he would have settled for a diplomatic victory and an expended protectorate over the Ottoman Christians. The fact that in 1853 Nicholas considered this to be the minimum due to him as ‘reparation’ for putative Turkish bad faith and preferred war with England and France to retreat is a sign that he had ‘lost it’. The most hawkish, solid judgement on Napoleon in this crisis is that he planned for diplomatic success to elevate French prestige in Europe at the expense of Russia’s and that he was prepared to use armed diplomacy and fight with British support or cooperation on Turkey’s side. Had Prussia or Austria joined with Russia, he also would have been ready, with England as an ally, to march into the Rhineland or Italy and reacquire territory lost by France in 1814. However, his diplomacy in 1853 reveals an urge to ally with the German powers in order to defeat Russian diplomatically without war, while his fleet would be at the Bosphorus as a sign that France had saved Turkey. Brunnow’s and Nesselrode’s hypotheses that Napoleon was planning a coalition war with England in the Black Sea in defence of Turkey against Russia were really veiled warnings to Nicholas. They do not constitute the missing Bonapartist smoking gun that no one has found to date.6 Napoleon eventually lost it’ too, but not in 1853–54.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES: II – THE ENGLISHMEN
English and French propaganda would have had everyone believing that those countries were forced by Russian policies to go to war. Surely, however, even after Sinope and with the combined squadrons in the Black Sea, the English and French had the option of following Austrian counsels, as Paul Schroeder laments.7 They could have continued measured, gradual escalation and attempted without an immediate Baltic campaign or landing in the Crimea to compel or induce Russia to accept a peace on the basis of one of the Vienna protocols or Constantinople notes.
Such a policy, however, ran the risk of a very protracted crisis, Ottoman domestic troubles, a shift in public opinion, and maybe even Austrian defection from the anti-Russian camp to stricter neutrality, as well as the overthrow of the London Cabinet. It was simpler and safer for the British and their French allies to choose the method of offensives with the enhanced if modest war aims of reducing Russia’s strategic assets in the Black and Baltic Seas. The French and the English, especially the latter, were thus reactively aggressive in establishing their minimal goals, not to mention the fanciful schemes mounting a super-coalition war against Russia.
Accordingly, two English statesmen are often given peculiar blame for having brought on the war: Palmerston and Stratford. Palmerston is much more problematic to evaluate than Napoleon, because of a surfeit of smoking guns. Like some Americans of the Cold War era he combined an essentially aggressive combination of contempt for Russia as a ‘humbug’ and fear of her expansionist potential.8 He had risked war with the Russians and ‘bearded’ them twice in the Black Sea and the Dardanelles by 1850 and sent the Malta squadron to Besika Bay on two other occasions. In 1853–54 he among British politicians was the most consistent in imagining an expanded war to remake the map of Europe. In 1856 he did not want to cease hostilities, even though most of his Cabinet were in favour of doing so. But this does not mean that he had long sought war with Russia, as Monnier claimed.9
Nesselrode fretted that Palmerston ‘came into this world to create misery’, and Nicholas suspected ‘that Palmerston was really sick in the head’.10 He was, in fact, the quintessence of a politician who rides the crests of popular nationalism while despising the masses and allowing others to take the lead in devising democratizing reforms. His established role was that of England’s imperial champion, his attitude toward most foreign obstacles or prospective prey being pugilistic. Making liberal use of gunboat diplomacy and initiating two wars with hapless China over commercial policy, he did not fear maritime rivals and risked war with France over the Levant and with the United States over Central America. All the same, up to 1853 he asserted British interests while avoiding war with any major power.
The major question, then, is whether this ‘most English Minister’ actively sought war in 1853 before the Russians occupied the Principalities and refused to leave. It seems not. His initial security task as Home Secretary was to form a special committee to recommend measures to strengthen home island defences at a time when the main threat seemed to come from France, not Russia. Until the autumn his policies were reactive, his basic principle being that words should be met with words and facts with facts. When official word arrived in London, in late May, of Menshikov’s real demands, Palmerston correctly assumed from experience with Nicholas I that these represented St Petersburg’s instructions and wanted England and France to commit themselves to protect Turkey by arms if necessary.11
Palmerston’s role in shaping public opinion is controversial. As soon as he was certain that the Russians meant to push for the protectorate, he was unwilling to cede to them the moral high ground and encouraged strong responses to their manifestos and circulars.12 He was also a central figure in England’s alarmist press campaign, but the British press was much more than his mouthpiece, The Morning Post, and revived its russophobia in response to Russia’s mobilization and Menshikov’s mission. Everyone who counted had the means to air his views in the London papers. The Morning Post was willing to exit the crisis with the Vienna Note until Nesselrode’s Examen surfaced. It was other papers, such as The Morning Advertiser, that printed David Urquhart’s extremist position and showed themselves quite ‘Turkish’ by denouncing the Vienna Note, after Nicholas accepted it, for omitting a provision for evacuation of the Principalities. To single out Palmerston’s influence over the popular mind as a major factor in the origin of the Crimean War may be an over-simplification of the diversity of press and society in mid-nineteenth-century England.13
On the other hand, Paul Schroeder is certainly correct that Palmerston and his protégé Clarendon in no way considered Austria’s role as one of mediating.14 But Schroeder, in my opinion, misses the most important point for the people involved in 1853: there was nothing to mediate. Turkey was right, Russia was wrong, and that was that, though diplomats hoped to avoid smearing mud in the Tsar’s face by putting it this way. Palmerston was ahead of everyone else in London and Paris in calling for a four-power interpretation of the Vienna Note, were it to be of any use, and viewing the Turkish Modifications as coming from an endangered ally. Likewise, and here is the rub, he was ahead of everyone else in conceiving a coalition war in the Black Sea, with the illusion that the Anglo-French squadrons and Turkish troops officered by Europeans would be sufficient.15
Palmerston was thus the most confident and blatantly partisan strong man within the Anglo-French war factions, since Russell and Napoleon despised the Turks, and the latter really wanted some kind of entente with Russia too. However, Palmerston could not make his entire policy England’s policy and was ready to settle at first for more modest war aims, await developments and see how the campaigns went. He was as much to blame as anyone else for Britain’s maximal goals for the war, but not for the war’s breaking out in the first place.
Stratford is even more problematic than Palmerston for several reasons. The ‘Great Ambassador’ seemingly dominated and orchestrated Reshid’s actions from May 1853 onward; he pre-empted, anticipated or thwarted opponents in Constantinople, London and everywhere else; and he got first London and then the Vienna Conference to adopt his own policies. He certainly was not seeking a war out of personal animosity toward Nicholas – a common myth then and later. Stratford claimed he was too little a personage to wage such a vendetta, but actually he was too big to waste his time on what he saw as such a secondary issue. He was after the largest of prizes: the settling of the Eastern Question in Britain’s favour.16 This meant opening Turkey up to Western commercial, industrial and financial penetration, and forcing a domestic reform, which many observers, including Turks, saw as hastening the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – the death of a barbarian from civilization.
Such was, more or less, British policy towards the backward world. Other countries were expected to play by English rules, but Nicholas chose to break rules accepted by all the other European powers in his attempt to increase Russian influence in Turkey. Stratford thereby had a golden opportunity to further British interests, and his unique achievement was to direct Turkish bellicosity, diplomacy, domestic policy and public relations in such a way as to prevent self-defeating initiatives and allow for coalition support.
The real questions concerning Stratford are these. What did he mean with his appeal in early July to stop at no sacrifice to solve ‘the great Eastern Question’? Was he saying that once Russian troops had crossed the Pruth, England should not let Nicholas off the hook without a major strategic setback that could only result from a costly war? And, worse still, was Stratford such a clairvoyant, determined and successful anti-Russian conspirator that he ‘lured’ Menshikov,17 advised him to be brusque18 and orchestrated his last seven weeks on the Bosphorus to produce the Russian occupation and/or engineer the Ottoman responses so that the Tsar, to quote Russell, ‘having announced a play… must go on with the performance’?19
Certainly Stratford did not cause the Menshikov Mission to fail: the latter’s instructions and standing Anglo-French policy did. Then, starting in May, Stratford helped the Turks prepare clever two-pronged diplomatic weapons to ready the ground for either a diplomatic victory or a coalition war. His attempts to prevent the Turks from starting hostilities in October were connected with his sense of proper timing and his desire to control the Turkish military. He was not responsible for the Russian gamble at Sinope, which paved the way for full Anglo-French involvement in the war. However, he had been ready since July to promote a costly coalition conflict to eliminate Russian power from the Black Sea and most of its shores. J.L. Herkless’s recent defence of Stratford falters precisely because it neglects his memoranda which aimed to influence the British Cabinet and public opinion.20
The basic case against Stratford, one that has been made since the eve of Menshikov’s departure from Constantinople to the present time, boils down to this: without such an ambassador in Constantinople, the Meyendorffs, the Buols, the Bourqueneys and their backers might have had a free hand with their projects and expedients; the Turks might have accepted a humiliating denouement and gone on trying to cheat everyone; and then Nicholas might have evacuated the Principalities, dredged the Sulina Channel, and thereby accommodated European and Ottoman sensibilities. In other words, Stratford’s ultimate offence was his ability to outwit Europe’s diplomatic establishments and not allow Europe to exit this embroglio via the Vienna Note.
There are two things wrong with this supposition. The first is the erroneous assumption that the wording of the Vienna Note, or even the Menshikov Note, did not matter or was no threat to Turkey. Thus have argued Vinogradov, Schroeder, Curtiss, Rich and others – as if the Turks had no experience with the Russian legation, no memory, no judgement, and no free will. The second problem is that the real alternative to Stratford in Constaninople after Nicholas mobilized in early 1853 was a genuine Palmerstonian, such as Rose. International European court politics had lost out. Fair or foul, British opinion in 1853 would not have tolerated a wishy-washy, pro-Austrian ‘bug’ like Aberdeen in Stratford’s place.21 La Cour, Bruck and Baraguay were instructed to represent an independent policy, but Stratford was able to string them along precisely because they dared not abandon their home country’s commitments to the Turks. He knew that supporting Ottoman mobilization and armaments from late May onward would lead ineluctably to backing the Turks militarily at some point. However, if the Porte could or would not help defend itself, then the Ottoman Empire had no raison d’être and only deserved to be carved up – something that only Nicholas and one faction of Russians really desired.
In sum, Stratford agreed with the moderate Turks that the Menshikov and Nesselrode ultimata and the invasion of the Principalities were ideal grounds for getting rid of Kuchuk-Kainarji, but would settle for limiting its meaning, as with the Turkish Modifications. Stratford was also ready to escalate Anglo-French diplomacy and armaments, as Turkey geared up for war, and ready to turn any war into a strategic one; nevertheless, he would settle for the diplomatic victory inherent in any of his or Reshid’s proposals. Like Palmerston, Stratford personally is partly responsible for the enhanced war aims and expanded war, but not for its genesis.
None of the other major figures is worth discussing as a key instigator of the Crimean War. Nesselrode and Russia’s ambassadors could have been blunter, but they gave Nicholas the necessary information to make the rational judgements he refused to make. Their choices all along were to resign or be his accomplices. In fact, most of the ambassadors attempted on their own, within the boundaries of their instructions, to initiate policies to avoid war or to limit it. One might just as easily blame a Castelbajac or a Rochow for coddling Nicholas, or a Buol or a Francis Joseph for fence-straddling, or a Westmorland, who could not forcefully represent British policy in Vienna, or his superiors, who left him at his post and wished to pretend that they were ‘drifting toward war’, when they were really engaging in measured escalation.22
LESS PERSONAL FORCES
If English policy is at all to blame for the Crimean War, then the culprits are two-fold, neither one strictly personal. First of all, British imperialism and expansionism, like those of other Great Powers, courted war with more backward rivals or potential victims. But in this case the primary clash was between Russian and Turkish ambitions within the Ottoman Empire, while the French, British and Austrians were able to capitalize on Turkish goals. Secondly, the peculiar constellation of domestic British politics resulted in a shaky coalition of dovish Peelites, such as Graham and Gladstone, more hawkish Whigs, such as Russell and Clarendon, and two characteristic and opposing relics, who had held various offices on and off since the first Napoleonic era: Aberdeen and Palmerston. Those waiting in the wings were not the critics of Stratford, but Tories like Clanricarde, Malmesbury and Disraeli – ready to pounce upon the coalition for being soft on Russia. The Aberdeen coalition at least gave Nicholas a chance to prove that his mobilization was for show, but he failed to do this and left Brunnow with egg on his face. Aberdeen may have been an ineffectual constable, but he was not, in this case, the armed extortionist who brought on the war over a contrived issue that was produced by his own subalterns.
The developing press in the initial age of the telegraph and steamship played an ancillary role. The press enabled the informed public of Austria, Russia and Turkey, as well as England and France, to learn of the comings and goings of open diplomacy and the views of a variety of statesmen. The press forced all states, including Russia and Turkey, to justify their actions in the eyes of their people. The press, with its reports coming in from all over the world, also ensured that the views of the important European commercial colonies on the Bosphorus were aired in the home countries. The press was a vital element in the Porte’s keeping the British and French to their commitments. It thereby helped prevent one of those imaginatively concocted solutions that some diplomats and historians love, in this case one allowing Russia to withdraw from the crisis with some gain at the expense of a very unwilling Turkey – the basis of every compromise proposal.
Commerce and economic imperialism were only indirect determinants of the Crimean War. Economics underlay Britain’s position in the ‘Great Game’, but the cost-conscious London government was not about to start a Great Power war to accelerate the economic penetration of the Ottoman Empire or to force free trade policies upon Russia. Gladstone, who ran the exchequer in 1854, would not even grant the Turks a loan until the French forced his hand. On the Russian side, moreover, the negotiating strategy of Menshikov’s mission was to accommodate England’s economic interests and only press for political goals.
In one place only did economic interests figure directly. Austria, Britain, Turkey and the Romanians opposed the obstruction of the Sulina Channel – a policy of malign neglect, which favoured Russian grain exports from Odessa. Freeing the mouth of the Danube would eventually have become a serious issue, but in the event merely became the specific, limited, Austrian aim in supporting the Anglo-French war effort in 1854.
The Great Power arms races also played a tangential, if interesting, role in the genesis of the Crimean War. Since the mid-1840s, war steamers had put teeth into the standing Russian threat to launch an attack on Varna, Sizopol or the Bosphorus from Sevastopol and Odessa in case of a crisis. On the other hand, Russian expertise had called for more such vessels before a surprise attack might be launched. Nicholas initiated armed diplomacy in 1853 before his forces were ready to do their assigned job, which is one reason why his plans failed.
War steamers and screw battleships also gave the French in the early 1850s a certain daring in the Mediterranean that had been lacking since 1841. When the chips were down, however, the French admirals were loath to test their mettle in combat against the Russians in the Black Sea. Napoleon’s usually cautious diplomacy reflected this maritime insecurity.
England’s new complement of fifteen big screw battleships turned the French threat temporarily into a sorry joke, but made a Baltic expedition much more promising than in the 1830s or 1849, when Palmerston only operated in Besika Bay. Russell’s comment in March 1853 that if the Tsar proved a cheat, he would face action in the Baltic as well as the Black Sea was no empty threat. But this fleet had been built up to fight France or America at virtually any place on the globe, not Russia in the Baltic, where Nicholas was satisfied with Russian control over Finland and the Åland Islands, and enjoyed good relations with the conservative courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Had the British, nonetheless, sought a war to test the new warships, they would have at least encouraged the French in the Holy Places dispute. In the event, even Rose tried to temper both sides, and the London statesmen, as well as Stratford, tilted toward Russia. When the occupation of the Principalities made war likely, then the new battle fleet propelled Graham and the Admiralty to centre stage and provided a strategy for the Baltic, but the fleet was no more the cause of the war than a gun is the cause of a hold-up. If anything, the time necessary for a full naval mobilization after September meant that the diplomats had ample further opportunity to talk.
IDEAS
Ideas had but a secondary role in causing the war and can hardly be separated from the social movements or competitive imperialism that underlay the mid-century domestic and international crises. British and European russophobia were merely one set of political notions related to the international competition of the day. This russophobia rose and fell in direct proportion to the growth of Russian external influence and naval power in the 1830s, was dormant in the 1840s, and revived as a result of the interventions of 1848–49. It then died down once more, only to be rekindled by Russia’s mobilization, Menshikov’s mission and military moves in 1853. To credit russophobia for the outbreak of the Crimean War is to neglect the real course of politics and diplomacy in 1852–1853. If anything, Nicholas’s misplaced on-and-off gallophobia, which he projected onto other powers, contributed more to the origin of the war than did British and European russophobia.
The most powerful of the disruptive ideologies of the time was nationalism in its various forms, which promoted the forward policies of England, France and Russia. Nationalism also threatened the very existence of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires and Russian control over her border provinces. On the other hand, the clash between demands for democracy and domestic reform and existing establishments meant that exporting tensions to the international arena was an attractive policy option for ruling cliques. But this observation says very little, since the external projection of domestic tensions has been a standing option for most great powers in modern times and has underlain every modern European war.
Actually the greatest of the unfulfilled nationalisms in 1853, that of the Germans, had created a community of British-French-Russian interest that operated in the 1848–52 Danish crises. Only with this question shelved could the British, French and Russians afford to allow the Eastern Question to get out of hand. Even in 1853–54, the greater German Question kept the lesser Eastern Question within certain bounds. Since the seventeenth century all major wars in Europe have been at least partially German wars. The Crimean War was not a ‘great’ war because the Germans themselves did not wish it to be one.
As it turned out, nationalism, a growing force in Europe at this time, played a paradoxical role in the genesis of the Crimean War. Nicholas’s domestic and foreign policies during 1848–53 were those of counter-revolutionary containment of nationalism. Nevertheless, the specific policies he pursued to block the Ottoman counterrevolutionary resurgence in the Balkans threatened Austria’s counterrevolutionary revival, which he had aided with arms, blood and treasure. As the Austrians were the first to note, Nicholas started to ally de facto with the Balkan nationalism that he was trying to control. France and England were also prepared to ally themselves either with third-party nationalism or with the European counter-revolution, as their geopolitical interests might demand. In short, both nationalism and the counter-revolution were pervasive forces during 1848–53, but they did not have to result in a Russo-Turkish or Crimean war.
Perhaps the most important of the ideologies that helped bring on the war were the peculiar concepts of the semi-modernizing empire represented by Official Nationality in Russia and the Tanzimat in Turkey. Guided by the principles of ‘autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality’, His Imperial Majesty in St Petersburg sought to extend the benefits of his enlightened rule to his Orthodox co-religionists in Turkey. On the other hand, since 1839 His Highness the Sultan had theoretically considered all of his subjects, regardless of religion, equal citizens before the law: ‘Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church, Jews in the synagogue, but there is no difference among them in any other way.’23 Official Nationality, however, kept religion as a special category and foregrounded Kuchuk-Kainarji. Without an intellectual package like Official Nationality, the Russian government could not have combined the outlook of a nineteenth-century conservative European Great Power with the obsessive illusions concerning the Ottoman Orthodox. Without Tanzimat ideals and fictions, there was no justification for Ottoman sovereignty over Christians in the mid-nineteenth century, and the Ottoman resurgence in the Balkans would have obtained less support from Europe.
It should not be forgotten, however, that Official Nationality and the Tanzimat had clashed from 1839 to 1847 without any war crisis, and the problems after 1848 were prompted by revolutionary upheaval in south-eastern Europe. The 1849 Convention of Balta Liman and the resolution of the refugee crisis were Russo-Turkish compromises, with the British and French supporting the Turks and the Austrians more or less supporting the Russians. Leiningen’s mission in February 1853 produced a parallel Austro-Turkish compromise, with the British and French again backing the Turks and the Russians backing the Austrians. Menshikov’s mission got rid of a liberal ministry in Serbia and prepared the way for a Russian-Ottoman-French compromise over the Holy Places. All of this shows that, even under the impact of revolutionary movements and counterrevolutionary paranoia, the pretensions of Official Nationality and the Tanzimat – that is, Russian and Russian-backed Austrian imperialism and the confluence of British, French and Ottoman imperialism -could and did compromise over concrete issues.
ATAVISM AND MEDIEVALISM
The Roses, la Valettes, Slades, Balabins and other strident and bellicose agents of imperialism played a part in exacerbating the situation that brought on the war. So did the Ozerovs, Bottas and Valergas, those generals and colonels of the cold war over the Holy Places and their bigoted minions and lobbyists who had a crusading mentality towards rival Christians. However, it was the Ottomans who initially were the most eager of all to give battle, even though most Turks who understood weaponry recognized their own weakness and Russia’s qualitative and quantitative superiority.
The Turkish urge to fight, represented by Omer Pasha and Mehmed Ali, was as atavistic as rational. In so far as it was calculating, in the hands of Fuad or Reshid, its calculus was political and diplomatic, not military. The actual drive towards war represented an explosion of frustrations against all Europeans, which was cleverly directed toward the traditional and visible Russian enemy. The British and French, whose influence bore away from within at traditional Ottoman society, institutions and thought, were more or less spared. The superficial Westernization and modernization of some of the Ottoman elite and parts of the army and navy fed illusions that somehow Turkey could pacify the Balkan peoples and even regain control of the Black Sea. Western military aid was thus a contributing factor to the Ottoman resurgence in the Balkans and Turkish confidence in adopting a French orientation in late 1852.
Tsar Nicholas’s reaction to this Turkish ‘insolence’ was also atavistic, connected with both counter-revolutionary paranoia and the frustrated megalomania of a middle-aged autocrat who imagined himself the senior monarch of Europe and Western Asia. Not surprisingly, the twin symbolic cores of the medieval value structure, religion and honour, figured heavily in both Russian and Turkish bellicosity. But the sense of injured national honour was also not absent from the Anglo-French speeches or public diplomacy. After Sinope, civilian crowds in England clamoured for their soldiers to be shipped off to die on distant battlefields for the sake of the nation’s dignity as well as Turkey’s and India’s security. Supporters of the British Empire had thus made Turkey’s battle their battle. Napoleon III was always looking over his shoulder at the fate of Louis-Philippe, whom the British had humiliated over the Eastern Question, even when compromising with him. To deny these irrational psycho-political elements, which constitute effective ‘ill will’, in the origin of the Crimean War is to ignore human realities and probably miss part of the essence of the story. But since these realities are also constants, we must redirect our focus to concrete human actions. And when we do this, we find that Nicholas I, by violating Ottoman territorial sovereignty after his initial armed diplomacy had achieved modest results, and by refusing to retreat diplomatically or withdraw from Ottoman territory, is more responsible than any other person for the Crimean War.
NOTES
1.Cf. Anderson, The Eastern Question, pp. 125, 131–2: ‘None of them had the slightest desire for war, but all were now using their armies and navies for essentially diplomatic purposes without any real understanding of the dangers this involved.… The Crimean War was thus the outcome of a series of misjudgements, misunderstandings, and blunders, of stupidity, pride, and obstinacy, rather than ill will.’ Hardly. In contrast, the contemporary liberal historian, T.N. Granovsky, ‘Zapiska o Vostochnom voprose’, 20 Nov./2 Dec. 1856 (GPB, 869/16/3).
2.Schmitt: 46.
3.Cf. AJ.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, pp. 59–62, for commentary more than facts.
4.Temperley ENEC: 508, 511; Michael Florinsky, whose fine general history of Russia relied heavily on Temperley, was more balanced: Russia. A History and Interpretation (2 vols, New York 1947), II: 858–69.
5.Nich. I, Notes, n.d., but ca. 1 Jan. 1853 (ZP 1.98), where it is clear that he envisioned the fall of the Ottoman Empire resulting from Turkish opposition to his demands; cf. Rich: 22. Schroeder, rather, characterizes the Tsar’s initial moves as ‘criminally rash’: AGBCW: 29.
6.Cf. above, @@ch. 6.
7.Schroeder AGBCW: 115–36.
8.Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling), The Life of Henry fohn Temple, Viscount Palmerston (3 vols – vol. Ill, ed. Evelyn Ashley, London 1870–74) III: 5 (Pirn, to William Temple, 21 April 1835).
9.Monnier: 19.
10.Nes. to Brw., 8/20 Oct. 1849 (TsGADA III/115); Nes. memo, Nich I. gloss, 2/14 Nov. 1851 (AVPR K 39).
11.Pirn, to Cln., Rus., 22 May, 7 July 1853 (Ashley II); Lambert PRW: 17.
12.Wal. to Drn., 19, 23, 26 May, 13 July 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 689–90).
13.Cf. Rich: 8; Seton-Watson BE: 6, note 19; Henderson, ‘The Seymour Conversations’, History XVIII.71 (1933): 339, 343; Martin: 85–102, 117–33, 143–54; Palmer BB: 13, 20–1.
14.Schroeder AGBCW: 136–7.
15.Plm, memos, 20 June, 12 July 1853; to Cln., 27–28 July, 26 Aug. 1853 (PRO 30/22/11A, AbC X, CIDp. c.3); Wal. to Drn., 24 June 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 690).
16.Str. to Cln., 4 July 1853 (CORR II.107), to LStr., 4 July 1853 (Lane-Poole II), et al; Gooch’s indictment of Stratford missed this key point: CHOCW: 232–41; Marriott’s did not: 231.
17.Marriott: 231–2 – sans source, but seemingly from Lane-Poole’s hero-worship and ignorance of Menshikov’s instructions: II: 255: ‘He [Stratford] conducted himself as a debonair diplomatist, and with gentle tact drew the Prince on to his fate.’
18.Bourgeois, Manuel II: 36 – sans source: certainly not in La Cour’s reports.
19.Rus. to Ab., 10 July 1853 (AbC X).
20.J.L. Herkless, ‘Stratford, the Cabinet, and the Outbreak of the Crimean War’, HJ XVIII (Sept. 1975): 497–523.
21.Martin: 232: ‘Bad luck they say all night and day/To the Cobugs and the humbugs/To the Witermbugs and the Scarembugs/And all the German horserugs/And the old bug of Aberdeen/The Peterbugs and Prussians/May Providence protect the Turks/and massacre the Russians.’
22.Ab. to Cln., 7 June 1853 (Maxwell II).
23.Riasanovsky, Nicholas I, pp. 235–65; Davison ROE: 31.