CHAPTER FIVE
THE TENSE AFTERMATH OF THE REFUGEE CRISIS
The outcome of the refugee crisis heartened some Turks, but embittered Nicholas. However, the focus of European diplomacy shifted away from Constantinople to Germany, France and their neighbours. The nexus of problems associated with the German Question dominated throughout 1850 and part of 1851. The possibility that the Bonaparte prince-president might re-establish the French Empire and overthrow the settlement of 1815 loomed in the background and seemed highly likely in late 1851. Switzerland, Belgium and the Italian states were the political battleground for the conflicting interests of their Great Power neighbours. In the light of all of these matters the Eastern Question appeared somewhat secondary; however, it would not go away.
All of the major states, except for Prussia, added some fuel to the Ottoman fires. The Tsar continuously hoped that others might grasp, as he did, that the Ottoman Empire was on the verge of collapse and make a preliminary settlement providing for Russia’s security needs; however, he made no disruptive moves in the Orient. His navy was trying on paper only to prepare strategically for the next Turkish crisis. Nevertheless, he remained touchy over what he perceived as Russia’s political space.
Palmerston, already mobilized by the refugee crisis in late 1849 and hardly moved by criticism over the Dardanelles, pursued unilateral and stubborn gunboat diplomacy until July 1850 against the Greek government. His aim was to stop it from supporting Ionian–Greek patriots and to force it to compensate Don Pacifico, a Portuguese businessman with a British passport, whose property an Athens mob had looted. Brunnow tried mightily to embarrass Palmerston in his own backyard, but he would brook no Russian interference in the Mediterranean, and only reluctantly agreed to minimal French mediation.1
The Turks supported Britain in the Greek affair, continued to rebuff Austria over the refugee issue, and moved to strengthen their own hold over the Balkans. Omer Pasha, military governor of Bosnia as of May 1850, cynically employed Hungarian and Polish refugees in his armies to suppress native Balkan insurgents, who opposed both older and more modern forms of Ottoman administration. Schwarzenberg showed his chronic displeasure with the Porte by pensioning off the Internuncio Stürmer and leaving the Austrian mission under a chargé d’affaires – Eduard von Klezl. Austro-Turkish relations remained tense into early 1853, each side encroaching on the other’s preferred political space in the Western Balkans and the lower Adriatic Sea.2
The French, having helped temper the Russians, Austrians and British, were angling to increase their own influence in Turkey and the Mediterranean. As the protecting power in the Vatican since April 1849, France sought to lead a bloc of Mediterranean powers in support of the Catholic renaissance in the Holy Land and the overthrow of the Orthodox or Greek domination of the Holy Places. A common conjecture is that Louis Napoleon raised this issue in order to provoke a crisis with Russia, destroy the 1815 settlement, break up the Austro-Russian alliance, and make one with England.3 In other words, the new bully on the western end of the block was cleverly setting the stage for future fights with the established bullies to his east. Such a post hoc reading assumes that the prince-president could predict the Russian foolhardiness. In fact, Napoleon’s outlook was much more defensive. He feared the recreation of the British-Austrian-Russian alignment that stymied France in 1839–41, and his Foreign Minister, La Hitte, told Aupick not to provoke a crisis.4
Contemporaries, including some Russians and Turks, assigned a more modest motive: Louis Napoleon’s need to placate his Catholic supporters. His Foreign Ministry also harboured a few advocates of an aggressive Catholic policy in the Levant, but normally paid scant attention to this issue except when pressured by foreign powers. The astute French diplomats understood how seriously Russia took religious issues and saw to it that Paris compromised rather than face ostracism and isolation in Europe.5 All the same, and despite this suppleness, any moves by Catholics to reassert their influence in the Holy Land had to evoke a Russian response.
The historian’s mission is to determine whether this quarrel, among the others of 1848–53, was the chief issue that led to war, and if so, how and why. As we have noted, social conditions, material constraints and the operations of the balance of power prevented a land war at this time over German unification, the most powerful European problem connected to mainstream economic and intellectual developments. The balance of power also worked in a normal fashion in the quarrel over the Holy Places and provided guidelines for rational behaviour. This was true, even though most regimes were insecure at home, and the weakened Concert of Europe after 1848 reduced the impediments to unilateral, strident moves by the Great Powers or the Ottomans. The Sultan’s government had the ultimate authority over the Holy Places, so any recourse to threats would involve Turkey’s security and hence England, Austria and the entire Eastern Question. Neither France nor Russia could have any rational grounds for provoking a war against a coalition of the other powers. The Turks might gain something from a successful war against Russia, but the price would be more economic subordination to Western Europe.
Only an irrational impulse, one sufficiently powerful to override simple considerations of other states’ interests and the correlation of forces, could set off a war under these circumstances. And maybe there were some such impulses. Even if rather puny material interests underlay the rival claims for the sanctuaries, their symbolic meaning was immense for the Orthodox and Catholic clerics in the Holy Land and their backers everywhere. There was a second symbolic issue as well. Nicholas I, as God’s chosen and anointed leader of Holy Russia, was no more ready to admit the legitimacy of a Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor by the will of the people than to allow a Latin assault on the leading position of the true, Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Louis-Napoleon, on the other hand, could compromise with the Tsar over the Holy Land without losing power or prestige, but not over French domestic politics. Nicholas eventually gave way in both matters, but before he did, he set Russia on a disastrous diplomatic course that led to war.
RIVAL CHALLENGES TO THE STATUS QUO
A local conflict over the Christian sanctuaries in Judaea was about to erupt on the eve of the 1848 Revolutions. Confessional rivalry was on the increase. Catholics had never accepted as final the recent Orthodox gains and Protestants were making their own inroads. In 1842 Anglicans installed a bishopric in Jerusalem, the same year that the Russians established their Palestine mission. Three years later the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem moved his residence back from Constantinople to his see. This was followed in 1847 by Pius IX’s sending of a Latin Patriarch to Jerusalem – an office that had been titular since the fall of the Crusader states in 1291. Meanwhile, French monks were repopulating the Latin cloisters of Palestine, and Vienna financed a local Franciscan printing press in 1846. Catholic propaganda even called for the expulsion of the Orthodox from common Christian shrines as a holy act. Hostility between Latin and Greek reached such a level that the Turks had to place soldiers inside and outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to preserve order, though this did not prevent rival groups of monks from joining battle with candlesticks and crosses.6
The spark that ignited the conflict at the end of 1847 was the disappearance of a silver star with Latin inscriptions that was located over the place where Jesus was thought to have been born. This was in the Greek-owned sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Latins held title to an adjoining sanctuary, but, unlike the Greeks and Armenians, no longer possessed a set of symbolic keys to the main doors of the church, and so had to enter through a side door. Now the Latins used the ‘theft’ of the star as the pretext for demanding the restoration of all Greek ‘usurpations’, calling upon the French government for support. Deliberations over this matter in Paris were under way, when Louis-Philippe was overthrown in February 1848.7
The revolutionary situation of 1848–49 allowed the new French regime to try to combine support for the Catholics with opposition to Russia’s Balkan policies, an approach consistent with Napoleon’s desire to anchor French policy with a British entente. Early in 1849 his first Foreign Minister, Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, instructed Aupick to combine a protest in the name of the 1841 Treaty against Russia’s unilateral occupation of the Danubian Principalities with a demand for the restoration of the star and France’s ‘religious protection’ that had declined since 1740.8
Once the refugee crisis abated, La Hitte instructed Aupick in January 1850 to seek a solution on the basis of France’s 1740 Treaty that guaranteed the Latins the Holy Places which were then in their possession. The cleverness of this argument was that if the Turks could violate a formal treaty, then, implicitly, France could too – something which the other European powers wished to avoid. La Hitte tried to mobilize France’s fellow Catholic missions, which also had an interest in the Catholic cloisters and other institutions in the Holy Land. Belgium was at the forefront with its dominant Catholic party at home, commercial presence in the Orient, historical links to Europe’s Crusades, and a very Catholic envoy, Blondeel van Cuelebroeck, an expert on the Near and Middle East. Piedmont, Naples, Spain and Portugal seconded French efforts. The Austrians, however, held off: though they claimed the need to examine the issue their reluctance was really due to the perception of the French as rivals and an unwillingness to annoy the Russians or the Turks.9
Blondeel pre-empted Aupick on 6 May 1850 with a separate request for the restoration of the tombs of Godfrey and Baldwin, the founders of the Flemish Jerusalem dynasty (1099–1187). Three weeks later Aupick demanded the restoration to the Catholics of the Holy Places allegedly in their exclusive possession in 1740. These were the Sanctuary of the Nativity in Bethlehem with the right to replace the star and the tapestry in the Grotto; the all-important right to repair the main cupola of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and restore the building to its pre-1808 condition; and the Tomb of the Virgin outside Jerusalem at Gethsemane. Aupick argued that compliance would be in keeping with the Porte’s recent adoption of European attitudes toward the rule of law.
At the same time Cyrill, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, made his own formal request for permission to repair the cupola of the Holy Sepulchre. Anyone who has seen an Orthodox cupola with the face of the Pankrator – the Omnipotent Christ staring down upon the human worshippers – can grasp the meaning of control over the iconography and inscriptions on this representative of ‘heaven on earth’. The Orthodox had repaired this dome in 1808 and reputedly had substituted Greek iconography and inscriptions for Latin ones.10
The Russian minister Titov needed no special instructions to urge the French to leave matters alone and save the Turks from an embarrassing situation. In reporting the Belgian and French demarches he hit the bull’s eye:11 ‘The litigation is as old as it is complicated; no attempt to resolve it has proved successful; the titles are obscure and contradictory.’ The Porte knew this too and ‘abstained from committing itself to either side without the maturest deliberation’, as the well-informed Stratford urged privately on Grand Vizier Reshid.12
The Turks in fact did nothing, so in mid-August Aupick asked the Foreign Minister Aali Pasha if he would at least take the 1740 Treaty as the basis of negotiation. Aali temporized by referring to a Council of Ministers that would not reconvene until the holy days of Ramadan and Bairam passed. Meanwhile, Nesselrode told Titov to support Cyrill’s request to repair the dome and also affirmed Russia’s opposition to any alteration of the religious status quo, claiming this would stir up the Sultan’s Orthodox subjects in Europe and Asia. This became a standard Russian line, and since each side held to its position, the French and Russians were heading for a clash.
The Porte tried to ignore both requests, seeing in Russia’s warning of potential Orthodox unrest a threat ‘to draw away the affection of the [Christian] rayahs from the Sultan’s government’.13 Consequently the Turks sought to satisfy their Orthodox subjects without the dreaded Russian official interference. Titov himself favoured an arrangement that affirmed the Sultan’s authority and reduced the embarrassment to the Latins. According to a scheme which was acceptable to the Russians and some Greek notables and clergy, the Turks would repair the cupola to Orthodox liking and later be reimbursed by the Greeks.
The Ottomans, however, could not ignore Aupick, so they disputed his claim that the 1740 Treaty took absolute precedence over earlier and subsequent internal grants. Though willing to recognize charters from the pre-Ottoman, Mamluk sultans of Egypt to the Latins, they also produced a firman or charter to the Greeks, granted by Selim I (1512–21), the Ottoman conqueror of Palestine. Finally, they offered to establish a commission with a Greek, a Catholic and an Armenian to examine everyone’s rights. Stratford, who was still trying to interest both London and the Porte in a long-term loan secured by Ottoman assets, favoured such a mixed body and tried to persuade Aupick to recognize any post-1740 firmans to the Greeks that did not blatantly contradict the 1740 Treaty. By early 1851 Titov was pleased with both the British and the Turks, but Aupick was not and sought fresh instructions from Paris.
The new word from France was quite explicit. A year had elapsed since Aupick was first told to raise the issue and no progress had been made, so he was to ascertain if the Turks still considered the 1740 Treaty valid. Meanwhile, the Russian government, neglecting Titov’s attempts to work with Stratford, reacted strongly. Nesselrode fired off an unmistakable challenge on 21 January:14
The day that the Emperor sees the cult or the Church persecuted or humiliated, be it in the Holy City or elsewhere, as the result of the suggestions of outsiders or with political aims in mind that we care not to fathom, His Majesty will not recoil before any consideration or any sacrifice to take up with pride the defence of his co-religionists and to insist upon the maintenance of the immunities which they have enjoyed since time immemorial, and among which control over the Holy Sepulchre and precedence in the celebration of offices may not be assaulted without a dreadful injustice.
Eleven days later, Nesselrode instructed Titov to base Russia’s claims on the vague terms of the 1837 Hatt-i Sherif of Mahmud II (1808–39) and the precedence of the post-1808 restoration. Titov then ‘protested against all inquiry into the right possession and insisted, in the Emperor’s name, on the actual state of occupation’, while Aupick demanded ‘to know purely and simply if the Porte considered itself bound still by the capitulations of 1740’.15 Klezl tried to reconcile the two sides by affirming Vienna’s theoretical support for Latin claims, but backed the Ottoman plan for a mixed commission. Aupick, however, vetoed it, leaving the deadlock intact.
THE ABORTED MIXED COMMISSION
This standoff created a dilemma in Paris and ended Aupick’s tenure in Constantinople, but not, of course, Tsar Nicholas’s in St Petersburg. Not seeking extra trouble, Nesselrode urged the Paris government to consider the ill effects of raising such a turbulent issue for the Ottoman regime, already rocked by ongoing disturbances among the Christians of the Levant. Similarly, the Russian representative in Paris, Count N.D. Kiselev concluded that the French did not know what they were doing and told the new Foreign Minister, Jules Baroche, that what was useful for obtaining Catholic votes in France was bad for Turkey and for the general peace. The Ottoman envoy, Prince Callimachi, also pleaded for moderation, but French newspapers clamoured for action. To mollify the clerical party, Napoleon appointed one of his friends, the Marquis Charles de la Valette, to replace Aupick and bring home a victory. To make a point, la Valette passed through Rome on his way to Constantinople and tried to rally the Vatican behind French leadership.16
La Valette did not have much luck in Rome, but he did have the initiative in Constantinople. A few months after he arrived in May, Baroche authorized a mixed French–Ottoman commission in return for the Porte’s admitting the 1740 Treaty as the basis of negotiations, and the French chose as representatives their expert Consul in Jerusalem, P.E. Botta, and the embassy’s First Dragoman or Interpreter, Ch. Schefer. Stratford expected the Turks to favour the Greek side and he was not far off the mark. They cleverly balanced their First Dragoman, Emin Effendi, with the Patriarchal Logothete or chief minister, Nicholas Aristarchi, whom even Nesselrode somewhat distrusted.17
The initial meeting took place without Aristarchi on Sunday 4 August at Emin’s home. The participants established procedures and admitted as valid some Ottoman documents and the 1740 Treaty and its antecedents. The commission then met there again on nine successive Mondays with one break up to 28 October before the Turks suspended it. The Latins had on hand a set of detailed firmans and confirmations from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, as well as stipulations from as late as 1811 refuting Greek pretences and precedents. Catholic scholars compiled another list alleging that almost all of the Holy Places were in Latin hands in 1740 and specifying which ones now excluded or discriminated against Latins. The Greeks and Turks, on the other hand, grounded the Orthodox case on a quasi-Donation of the Caliph Omar (634–44), who conquered Jerusalem in 636, and on confirmations and special firmans of more than half the Ottoman sultans since 1453. Bazili, Russian Consul in Syria, composed his own lengthy analysis of the conflicting rights.18
The first seven substantive meetings of the commission were devoted to establishing exactly what was actually stated in the firmans and judicial rulings from 1635 to 1757. At each session, the four commissioners duly signed the minutes of the previous conclave. Had only the documents discussed and recorded been recognized as valid, then the Latins would have taken control of the Churches of the Holy Sepulchre and the Nativity. But at the eighth session, on 21 October, Emin and Aristarchi began with Omar’s ‘Treaty’; Botta denied its validity; and the commission was deadlocked. Aristarchi conveniently missed the final meeting a week later, and the minutes of the last three sessions were never signed. Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure had overtaken the commission.19
The commission had actually laboured under competing guns from the start. Aristarchi aired his reservations before it met, and St Petersburg did not want it to meet at all, considering any official discussion to be a violation of the sacred status quo. Even before the sessions began, Nesselrode informed Titov that Russia was ready to counter French reliance on their 1740 Treaty with Kuchuk-Kainarji20 – what no other country would consider applicable to this case. La Valette wanted a rubber stamp of French demands and did not even wait for the commission to finish all of the Catholic documents before asserting the half-truth: ‘the Latin right is clearly established by the Committee of Investigation’. He further threatened: ‘if the moderation of his Government in seeking only joint participation were not duly appreciated, the claim of undivided possession by the Latins would be urged with all the weight of a demand warranted by Treaty.’ He thought that he had a private compromise arrangement with Aali Pasha to admit the Latins to all shrines claimed under the 1740 Treaty, without expelling the Greeks from any places where they were de facto in sole or joint possession. La Valette thus viewed the Porte’s apparent intention not to satisfy the Catholics ‘in very strong colours’. He talked of ‘France being justified in a recourse to extreme measures’ and boasted ‘of her superior forces now in the Mediterranean’.21
The Russians did not wait either. In response to Titov’s reports and perhaps to an appeal by Patriarch Cyrill of Jerusalem, the Tsar sent two letters to the Sultan towards the end of September. One was a friendly sovereign-to-sovereign greeting.22 The other was a ministerial communication that spelled out Russia’s position: namely that there should be no re-examination of ‘a question that was clearly and positively resolved by solemn ordinances and sovereign hatt-i sheriffs, some of which had been officially communicated to the Russian mission’. And there should be no ‘unjust concessions regarding the religious establishments that have been possessed since time immemorial by the Greek Church and visited annually by thousands of my [Nicholas’s] subjects by virtue of the treaties that fortunately exist between our countries and the intimate alliance [sic] that unites me with your majesty’.23 In other words, any Turkish recourse to the 1740 Treaty with France at the expense of Russia’s claims regarding the Holy Places was tantamount to violating Turkey’s existing treaties with Russia and breaking the Sultan’s alleged alliance with the Tsar. Nesselrode also informed Titov of Nicholas’s intention to close down Russia’s mission if the Ottomans persisted with their ‘blunders’. It seems to have been this explicit threat, rather than just the Tsar’s letters or la Valette’s loose talk, that caused the Turks to suspend the commission’s deliberations.24
Nicholas’s direct intervention was one aspect of a policy that presupposed the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Russell Cabinet with Palmerston in the Foreign Office had been on shaky grounds since the Don Pacifico imbroglio. Brunnow and others had been lobbying for a more conservative government and were hopeful. These facts explain why that August the Tsar summoned Brunnow back from London to consult and to compose some position papers, among them a detailed plan to initiate talks with Britain for the partition of Turkey.25
While Brunnow laboured, Nicholas journeyed to Moscow and back on the maiden voyage of the recently and hurriedly completed longest single railroad line in the world at that time. He left no written record of his strategic thinking at this moment, or what his new major construction project might be. Extension of the railroad network for strategic purposes, building up of Sevastopol as a ‘Second Kronstadt’, and launching some screw-propelled battleships of his own were all possibilities.
Nicholas also ordered Kiselev to try to arrange an entente with France in the Holy Land, but the Paris Cabinet refused to affirm most of Russia’s pretensions in return for a few concessions. On the other hand, Nicholas rejected Napoleon’s secret offer to curb the French mission in return for ‘respect regarding his ambitions in France’.26 Thus the impasse continued, and the stakes were getting higher.
THE ULEMA’S DEFT COMPROMISE AND THE SULTAN’S AMBIGUOUS PLEDGE
Some Turks sought to cut the knot by opening all the shrines to all believers, but Titov and la Valette would apply the principle of joint possession only to shrines in the hands of the other Church, and both badgered the Porte. Titov insisted that any further move against the status quo of the Holy Places would force him to make an official protest in the name of the Emperor. La Valette wanted to call the Mediterranean squadron, but lacked the authority to do so, and instead merely asked for new instructions. The Turks, though, aided by Stratford’s embassy expert and friend, Charles Alison, persevered with their own notions of legality and equity and towards the end of the year appointed a commission of ulema (leading mullahs) to weigh the conflicting claims.
At this point French domestic politics helped the Turks. While Britain urged an embarrassed French government not to push so far as ‘to lead to a diplomatic rupture’, Bonaparte engineered his 2 December coup, which, besides setting off the last serious peasant disorders in French history, made the restoration of the French Empire more likely.27 Consequently, it was politic for Napoleon to appear peaceful, and he promised the British to grant la Valette a leave. Although the latter continued to bluster and even boasted that Britain would do nothing if French warships bombarded the Dardanelles, his word now counted for less. Once Paris’s call for moderation arrived in mid-December, Aali explicitly denied to Titov that la Valette had made any threats at all.28
The French retreat cleared the way for an Ottoman compromise proposal, with Stratford’s and Titov’s partial knowledge. The Catholics could have a set of keys to the Bethlehem Nativity doors and officiate at the Tomb of the Virgin, but had no exclusive rights to either. At the end of December the ulema produced their official report. Arguing with delicacy and hair-splitting finesse, these doctors of Islamic law rested their case on Mehmed IV’s ruling from around 1686 against a Latin attempt to invalidate an earlier firman of Murad IV (1623–40). Since there was no subsequent invalidation of either decision, the Treaty of 1740 implicitly recognized Greek possessions as of 1686. The circle was thus squared, and the Ottomans, hopefully, could deny some Latin claims and still recognize the Treaty of 1740, without giving the Russians a pretext to mention Kuchuk-Kainarji.29
The Porte now hoped to satisfy the Greeks and Russians with ‘new firmans, explaining and fixing the extent of the rights on both sides, with a due regard to the status quo’,30 that is, they tried to smuggle in the restoration to the Catholics of the Bethlehem keys as a status quo measure. The Turks were also willing to offer to the Orthodox a new privilege of officiating at the Chapel/Mosque of the Ascension on Mount Olivet as compensation. On 25 January the Ottoman Council formally recommended this package to the Sultan. A week later Titov complained, but the Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem were willing to accept an exchange of concessions in the Tomb of the Virgin and the Ascension Chapel, provided that it also consolidated the status quo for the other sanctuaries. This soon became official Russian policy.
The Franco-Russian struggle now focused on the terms of the settlement, more precisely, how the Porte would interpret the status quo in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Expecting that la Valette would accept ad referendum and hoping that Titov at least would not formally protest, the Turks prepared to issue four documents on 8–10 February: a new firman regulating the Holy Places, an official note for la Valette, a less official one for Titov, and a responsive letter in the name of the Sultan to the Tsar.31
This time la Valette’s threat to depart worked in that it neutralized Titov’s attempt to keep the Bethlehem keys out of any official Turkish documents. But Titov’s pressure also worked. The note to the French, faithful to the spirit of the ulema’s report, stated that the Latins could obtain a replacement set of Bethlehem keys, but the similarly worded communique to Titov did not. The initial draft firman that Titov saw really clouded the issue by mixing tenses:32
As earlier the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians were all given a key to the southeast and north portals of the Great Church and to the door of the Grotto, and that this measure was confirmed and ratified in the supreme firman granted to the Greek nation in the year 1170 of the Hegira (1756–1757), we shall continue this policy.
Thus the Porte cleverly promised nothing other than the logically impossible policy of continuing to have done something. Stratford, who was really aiming for greater influence in Egypt for Britain and the Foreign Office or Paris Embassy for himself, considered the solution ‘equitable’. He thereby glossed over the contradiction between the two notes.
Titov and the Turks continued to clash over Russia’s alleged right to give prior approval to any agreement, and with this came a fissure in the Ottoman Cabinet. Having failed to get changes in the note to the French, he immediately let the Turks know about their own ‘lack of courtesy towards the Emperor’. Aali explained away the latest concessions to the Latins as due to recent French threats and Russia’s lacking something comparable to France’s 1740 Treaty. Reshid, however, blamed Aali for acting on his own and suggested the all-important restoration of the cupola as a reparation to the Orthodox.33
By late February Titov received St Petersburg’s provisional acceptance of the Tomb-Chapel exchange, with the proviso that the status quo, meaning Orthodox control over cupola repair and no essential change in Bethlehem, be reaffirmed. He thereupon requested and obtained the draft of the Sultan’s letter and the new firman. The letter, as the French recognized, was an evasive masterpiece. Formally responding to Nicholas I’s letter of the previous autumn, the Sultan stated that the Tsar himself had to comprehend why a sovereign ‘Padishah’ must observe his predecessor’s solemn engagements to another sovereign (i.e., King Louis XV of France in 1740). Noting the sole exceptions regarding the Tomb and the Chapel, but without mentioning the cupola or the keys, the Sultan gave a vague guarantee, which Nicholas himself marked with his characteristic ‘NB’:34 ‘Your Majesty will have learned from the reports of his representative that the salutary result of the scrupulous investigations that have been held concerning this question was that the present state of the sanctuaries is integrally preserved, confirmed, and consolidated.’ On the contrary, His Imperial Majesty would have just learned from Titov that the Patriarch of Jerusalem considered the guarantees in the firman too loose and that Stratford agreed that ‘the wrong was not on our [the Orthodox] side’. In fact, Nesselrode only needed an earlier report about the imminent Tomb-Chapel exchange to reply imperiously that the cupola was non-negotiable and to demand a special firman authorizing its repair. Furthermore, if a rupture ensued, the Emperor would not accept a special envoy to smooth out this difference, as in 1849.
The Greek community itself was divided over what to concede to the Latins, and Titov could not obtain all the changes he desired in the text of the new firman. The best he could manage before he took a leave on 20 March were some verbal assurances, which were rather unlikely to have come from an Ottoman official, and more indicative that bribery was at work:35
Formal assurances contained in a document addressed to the Emperor and signed by the Sovereign of the country have virtually the value of a Treaty, and the Ministers of His Highness do not dissimulate that henceforth, by the very admission of their Padishah, Russia becomes the guardian of their fidelity to ward off any deviation from the status quo. The engagement is precise and the wisdom of the Imperial Cabinet will determine the best procedure to guarantee the future and to recompense the Sultan for his loyal courtesy.
FROM SLEIGHT OF HAND TO BLATANT FRAUD
In fact, what had been transacted was neither ‘precise’ nor an ‘engagement’, although the Porte tried to pretend that the ‘arrangement … appears to satisfy the parties concerned’. The new version of the firman was backdated from mid-March to 10 February; it could satisfy Greek amour proper by refuting the Latins’ old maximal claims, but was vague and contradictory concerning the keys. The Latins had the right, as in the past, to have a set of keys and ‘not be prevented from officiating’, but no one was to ‘make any changes in the present state of the doors of the Church of Bethlehem’. The vizirial letter to the Pasha of Jerusalem also fudged the issue somewhat by stating that the award of the keys, together with the new arrangement for the Ascension Chapel, did not signify any changes in their traditional ab antique operations.36
Neither side would be pleased for long. The French were only ready to terminate the Holy Places dispute on the basis of the 8 February note, so long as the Russians did not force the Porte to enshrine the status quo. La Valette politely accepted the copies of the vizirial letters and firmans with reservations, just before he departed on 20 March, and enjoyed a gala send-off by the Turks.37 Sabatier, the French charge d’affaires, was more guarded and rightly nervous about the precise wording of all of these documents. Aali temporized and as late as 25 April would not show the French the text of the latest version of the ‘February’ firman.
The Russian chargé, Alexander Ozerov, for his part, finished Titov’s work by making one more change in the copy of the ‘February’ firman that was communicated to St Petersburg on 5 April. A month later the gist of it ended up in Sabatier’s hands in the form of another, different firman for Hafiz Ahmad to execute in Judaea. Now, as part of the status quo, the Latins were forbidden from officiating in the very Bethlehem church where they had just in principle reacquired a set of keys.38
The Holy Places dispute had finally reached a very serious impasse. La Valette, Botta and the Tsar had torpedoed the promising mixed commission. After the ulema made their ruling, Aali issued a note and a subsequent set of firmans and instructions that Stratford thought fair, but the Russians and, allegedly, Reshid opposed. Then the Russians got the Turks to introduce nuances into the concessions to the Latins, followed by a firman on behalf of the Greeks, which rendered the chief Catholic gain meaningless without expressly contradicting the note or firmans in favour of the Latins. The French were furious over this blatant fraud.
The Russians were furious too, chiefly over the cupola, and they hid behind several myths. One was that the note of 8 February had been a clever Turkish device to allow the French to retreat with honour. Another was that the Sultan’s letter was a solid guarantee, as was the hatt-i sheriff, or formal sanction, that encased the ‘February’ firman, even though this too was nothing but doublespeak and in no way denied the Latins a share of the Bethlehem services or the restoration of the cupola. Ozerov went further and suggested that a formal Cabinet communication be addressed to the Porte to insure that this firman be treated as an unalterable guarantee39 – as if the Russians were the ultimate interpreters of Ottoman charters to Ottoman subjects. None of these notions were conducive to rational analysis.
The Russian legation was really angling, with generous offers of bribes, for a cupola–keys exchange. Accordingly, the iconography in Jerusalem and the actual precedence in officiating in Bethlehem would leave no doubt that the Orthodox had the upper hand in the Holy Places, due to Russian pressure and prestige. It was precisely this that the French were determined to oppose, and they had a few more assets in their portfolio. The next time la Valette appeared on the scene in Constantinople, it would be on board the newly commissioned, ninety gun, screw-propelled Charlemagne.
NOTES
1.For conflicting interpretations, see Lynn M. Case, Edouard Thouvenel et la diplomatie de la Seconde Empire, pp. 34–51; E. Driault, Histoire diplomatique de la Grèce de 1821 à nos jours (5 vols, Paris: 1925–26), II: 318–71; Martens XII: 261–6; Puryear ERSQ: 186–8; Sheremet: 151–2.
2.Unckel: 57–64.
3.Nes. to Nich. I, 13/25 Dec. 1852, 20 Dec. 1852/1 Jan. 1853 (ZP I. 96–7), followed by official Russian historiography; Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea II: 57–65; Tarle I: 128–33; Rich: 6–7, 21–2; more cautiously, Thouvenel: 1–2; Monnier: 25–6; Saab OCA: 9–11; and many, many more with varying degrees of certainty.
4.Saab OCA: 10.
5.MQLS: 288–9; Kis. to Nes., 16/28 April 1852 (AVPR Pos. Konst. 213); Echard: 26; Thouvenel: 1–2.
6.Colbi-Zander Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century (2 vols, Jerusalem/New York 1984), I: 229–32; Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914, pp. 33–45; Temperley ENEC: 280–5; Otchety Az. dep., 1850, Dela dukh. (AVPR K 38).
7.MQLS: 296–8; Monnier: 34.
8.Echard: 26–7.
9.Tit. to Nes., 4/16 Aug. 1851 (AVPR GA V-A2 521); cf. M.A. Volkov, ‘Chto dovelo’, 1856 (ZP 1.30: 183), erroniously dating Aupick’s demarche May 1849; the basic sources for these events of 1850–1 are Stratford’s reports in CORR I; Titov’s correspondence with St Petersburg in AVPR K, GA-V2, and Pos. Konst.; and Aupick’s and La Valette’s correspondence with Paris in AMAE CP Turq.; a straightforward, factual account of the dispute, based mainly on CORR, is found in Alyce E. Mange, The Near Eastern Policy of Napoleon HI (Urbana 1940), pp. 18–23. Bapst and Saab use French sources.
10.Rose to Rus., 10 March 1853 (CORR 1.198).
11.Tit. to Nes. No. 64, June 1850 (AVPR GA V-A2 520).
12.Str. to Pirn., 20 May 1850 (CORR 1.1).
13.E. Pisani to Str., 27 Dec. 1850 (CORR 1.10).
14.Nes. to Tit., 9/21 Jan. 1851 (AVPR Pos. Konst. 213).
15.Aupick to Aali, Str. to Pirn., Klezl to Aali, 23, 25 Jan., 3 Feb., 1851 (CORR 1.14–15).
16.Nes. to Kis., Kis. to Nes., 13/25 March, 16/28 April 1851 (AVPR Pos. Konst. 213).
17.An Ottoman memorandum attributed to Fuad incorrectly states that the French proposed the commission: MQLS: 302.
18.Cf. Turkish Abstract of Charters to 1811 (Testa III: 313–20); Latin memo. (CORR 1.28); Bazili memo (NLP X: 81–118).
19.Temperley and other historians, following Rose, mistook the commission as pro-Latin: cf. Protocols, 4 Aug.–21 Oct. 1851, to Mlm., 16 Dec. 1852 (CORR 1.36, 86); ENEC 288.
20.Nes. to Tit., 19/31 July 1851 (AVPR Pos. Konst. 213).
21.Str. to Pirn., 17 Sept., 25 Oct., 4 Nov., 1851 (CORR 1.22, 26, 28) cf. Bapst: 208–9.
22.Nich. I to Abdulmecid, 7/19 Nov. 1851 (ZP 1.89); the questionable M.A. Volkov noted Cyrill’s appeal, which I did not find in the archives: ZP 1.30: 184.
23.Undated, but with Nes. to Tit., 13/25 Nov. 1851 (AVPR GA V–A2 521).
24.Nes. to Tit., 13/25 Sept. 1851 (AVPR Pos. Konst. 213); cf. MQLS: 302–3; M.S. Volkov (ZP 1.30); Str. to Pirn., 4 Nov. 1851 (CORR 1.28); Lav. to Drn., 15 Jan. 1853 (AMAE CP Turq. 311); Bapst: 210–11.
25.Nes. to Br., 12/24 July 1851 (AVPR K 83; TsGADA, III/115); Brw. report, 16/28 Oct. 1851, read by Nich. I, Jan. 1853 (TsGADA III/120); cf. Martens XII: 274–6.
26.Martens XV: 250–1.
27.Normanby to Pirn., 20 Nov. 1851 (CORR 1.30); Ted W. Margadant, The French Peasants in Revolt. The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton 1979), pp. 334–5.
28.La Valette’s later claim that Louis Napoleon ordered the Toulon squadron to Turkish waters in November and then called it back after the coup appears to be without foundation: CORR 1.60 (Rose to Mlm., 18 Oct. 1852); cf. Temperley ENEC 289.
29.Commission Report, by 31 Dec. 1851 (CORR 1.44); cf. Saab OCA: 168, note 6, citing the Turkish scholar Baykal, that the ulema rejected the applicability of Kuchuk-Kainarji to the Holy Places dispute.
30.Str. to Pirn., 7 Jan. 1852 (CORR 1.46).
31.CORR 1.51 dates the Note 18 Rabiul/9 Feb., while Testa III: 230–1 has 17 Rabiul/8 Feb.
32.AVPR GA V–A2 522: 90–4.
33.Tit. to Nes., 4/16 Feb. 1852 (AVPR GA V–A2 522).
34.Abdülmecid to Nich. I, dated 29Jan./10 Feb. 1852, sent 4/16 March 1852 (AVPR GA V–A2 522: 113–15); CORR 1.55 (sent 18 March 1852); and Turgot to Sabatier, 28 April 1852 (AMAE CP Turq. 308), correctly viewing the letter as justifying compromise.
35.Tit. to Nes., 4/16 March 1852 (AVPR GA V–A2 522).
36.‘February’ Firman, English copy (CORR 1.54, also ZP 1.90); Porte to Hafiz, sent 19 March 1852 (AMAE CP Turq. 308).
37.Lav. to Aali, 19 March 1852 (AMAE CP Turq. 308).
38.Firman to Hafiz, sent 6 May 1852 (AMAE CP Turq. 308).
39.Oz. to Nes., 14/26 March 1852 (AVPR GA V–A2 522).