PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHT
TURKEY’S STRONG MOVE AND LONDON’S STRONG HAND
As the year 1853 commenced, Tsar Nicholas was leading Russia into a trap which he and his Foreign Ministry officials had themselves set by trying to hold the Turks to promises which they had not really made. However, the main immediate issue was the fate of the Turkish expedition to subdue Montenegro. On 1 January Fuad announced that the Montenegrin constitutional changes represented an attack on Ottoman rights and a ‘spiritual and temporal rebellion’.1 If Omer’s military campaign now succeeded, the Russians would have a perfect excuse to intervene, though no other power would like this.
Britain, as usual, held the most important cards, and most intelligent people saw this, even Nicholas I – but he did not wish to change his course. All the leading British favoured compromise in the Holy Land, since they needed France and Russia to balance each other and Austria to help balance both. They believed the French had a right to their Empire and to international security, but should not have singed Russian beards over the sanctuaries and ought to give way in Jerusalem. The Austrians had a right to have peace and stability next door in the Balkans, but not to abet Russian claims on Turkey, dispossess the Turks of the enclaves, or obstruct freedom of the seas. The Ottomans had a right to their ‘sovereignty’ and ‘independence’, that is, to keep their empire intact for the benefit of Great Britain and British India. Russia had a right to redress in the Holy Places dispute, but not to control the destinies of the Balkans or Constantinople. Only a few influential freetraders, such as Richard Cobden, believed that partition of the Ottoman Empire and friendship with Russia would serve British commercial interests even more than containing Russia.2
Austria was in a potentially vulnerable position so long as the conflict with Turkey lasted and relations with England were not good – the aftermath of 1849 and the refugee crisis. The French could toy with a policy of friendship with Britain, Turkey, ‘Italy’, and even Prussia, and thereby threaten Austria with isolation or an isolated Austro-Russian combination, which was the last thing most Vienna statesmen desired. The Austrians therefore could not afford to alienate Paris or London too much and had to allow the Western powers a say in the Montenegrin and enclaves disputes. Nesselrode understood Austria’s dilemma, but Nicholas I clearly did not3 – or did not wish to.
Napoleon III for his part was not fooling when he said ‘the Empire means peace’, at least so far as Great Britain was concerned, since London also held the keys to any recreation of a hostile coalition. He thus swallowed his pride and allowed his half-brother Morny and Cowley to shepherd a compromise over credentials. Accordingly, the Austrian and Prussian envoys respectfully recognized Napoleon III as Francis Joseph’s and Frederick William’s ‘brother’ (frère), that is, a fellow legitimate monarch, while N. D. Kiselev represented Napoleon as merely the Tsar’s ‘good friend’ (bon ami). The British also leveraged the French into adopting a slightly more conciliatory stance in St Petersburg over the Holy Places. The only French ploy left was to stand firm on their interpretation of the ‘Note of 8 February’ and the original firman and hope that Russia, with or without Austria, would act in such a way as to swing Britain over to the side of France.4 Napoleon III remained fixed on securing domestic support for his new order, bolstered by an entente with Britain, rather than unilaterally maximizing gains in the Holy Places dispute. Nicholas I, on the other hand, remained in his self-contained box when it came to the Eastern Question.
THE TSAR’S HARE-BRAINED SCHEMES
The Tsar was most interested in action and moved quickly to select his special envoy. His first choice was P.D. Kiselev, the reforming Minister of State Domains, author of the Organic Statutes of Wallachia and Moldavia (1834) and, as Russia’s proconsul there (1829–34), an experienced negotiator with the Porte. He declined. The impatient Tsar then turned to the perennially sarcastic, nationalist-minded, lackadaisical Minister of the Marine since 1830, Prince A.S. Menshikov, a man with questionable diplomatic credentials. His special mission to Teheran in 1826 failed to prevent war with Persia from erupting, while his suggestion to send battleships through the Straits into the Black Sea to beef up the squadron assumed an expanded and inadmissible interpretation of Unkiar-Skelessi. He provisionally accepted on 3 January, but Nesselrode worked behind the scenes for the appointment instead of the security chief Orlov, the formidable but more realistic negotiator of Unkiar-Skelessi in 1833. He had recommended a forward policy of ultimatum diplomacy during the 1849 refugee crisis, but he does not appear to have sought to undertake this impossible mission.5
’General-Admiral’ Menshikov was an ideal choice from one standpoint only: Nicholas was interested in having someone in whom plenary military and naval powers could also be temporarily vested. The only problem here was that speed was essential to steal the jump on Britain as well as France, and Menshikov had been seriously ill since mid November. In the first five weeks of his ailments, he suffered from earaches, nosebleed, heavy cough, hoarseness, fever, insomnia, unbearable toothaches, splitting headaches, constipation, lesions and an abscessed sore throat. While he was recovering from gout, he suffered from more earaches and chills.6 Either Nicholas was blind, or he lacked anyone else equally eminent and really qualified, or else he really wanted war.
The most telling contradiction in Russian policy at this time is that the news from Constantinople was becoming more favourable. La Valette and the local Catholics, much to their chagrin, now had to witness the Ottoman pendulum swing back in favour of the Orthodox and render the latest decision meaningless. Nesselrode could tell Menshikov that the Turks were ‘willing to negotiate’. The Tsar even informed Seymour that the Turks were being more ‘reasonable’. Nicholas himself, however, was not becoming more reasonable, but stayed his stubborn course. The other half of Nesselrode’s message was: ‘the mission shall proceed anyway’.7
The Russian Emperor appears to have been the prisoner of his own mobilization orders and the quixotic impulses which had constituted one of his father’s fatal flaws. Determined to set something in motion right away, he considered the earliest plans for a coup de main on Constantinople that had been concocted already. Putiatin’s 1850 plan to send 40,000 men in the first wave to force Turkey to join against the Western aggressor had to be set aside since only one of the required eight new war steamers had been added. Nicholas also rejected an alternative 1850 scheme to land 30,000 men at Sizopol on the Bulgarian coast with Russia’s existing naval and merchant vessels, to be followed by a ten-day march to Constantinople. He readied instead by 19 January a variant of Admiral Lazarev’s 1835 plan for a surprise descent on ‘Tsargrad’ (as the Russians still called the former Byzantine capital) in order to pre-empt both the British and the French with just 16,000 men with thirty two field guns. Nicholas thus heeded Menshikov’s concern for surprise, lest the British Malta squadron, only two days’ sail from the Dardanelles, should interfere. The Tsar also ordered a machine factory to be built in Sevastopol and hoped that some mechanics and workers could be brought in from England.8
This scheme however, was unrealistic from both the military and diplomatic standpoints. A surprise launch of a trained expeditionary force was beyond Russia’s means at this time. The Tsar himself was distressed with the open enthusiasm and fanaticism of his patriotic officers during the initial phases of the mobilization, which could not remain a secret. His Foreign Minister of twenty-six years, Naval Minister of twenty-one years and most erudite ambassador (Brunnow) aired their worries about Britain, and Nicholas secretly shared them. Nevertheless, he proceeded as if the English would allow Russian forces to seize Constantinople and the Dardanelles, and his sceptical subalterns continued to execute his commands. He did not so much plan as hope that diplomacy would somehow preclude Aberdeen’s England and Napoleon Ill’s France from cooperating.9
Meanwhile Russia’s all-important negotiations with Britain continued and took a new twist. The British were still demanding moderation and compromise from France and Russia over the Holy Places. Nicholas, however, had been contemplating raising the question of the imminent collapse of Turkey with Britain and Austria around the time he ordered the mobilization of the Fourth and Fifth Corps. Nesselrode tried to have this issue quashed, but failed, and even the better news from Constantinople did not help. Nicholas proceeded with his idée fixe as soon as he learned from Brunnow that the Aberdeen Cabinet had been installed, that Palmerston would keep to domestic affairs solely (which could only have been wishful thinking) and that Russell leaned to the Russian side in the Holy Places dispute (which was true).10 At any rate, once the Tsar had mobilized against Turkey, he had nothing to lose by initiating secret feelers, since they might get Britain to convince the Turks to cede.
On 9 January, a day after Seymour had submitted a memorandum questioning the mobilization, Nicholas was in the midst of his serious war planning, but he interrupted his normal evening activities at the Winter Palace for a small dinner at the palace of the Grand Duchess Elena, who just happened to invite Sir Hamilton and Lady Seymour as well. Without mentioning the military moves, Nicholas confidentially raised the subject of his 1844 talks with Aberdeen, Peel and Wellington, and asserted that the British and Russian governments should be in complete accord over the Ottoman Empire, which was in danger of collapsing. In reporting this encounter, Seymour grasped the differences between the two governments perfectly: ‘that England has to desire a close contact with Russia, with a view to preventing the downfall of Turkey – while Russia would be pleased that the concert should apply to the events by which this downfall is to be followed’.11
Three days later the Tsar met with Nesselrode and Seniavin for an inordinate three and a half hours. The latter two had prepared an official dispatch, which followed the Brunnow-Nesselrode line and adumbrated the position that Russia would take throughout the crisis: Russia mobilized in order to counter French naval demonstrations and to protect Turkey from France. Nesselrode summoned Seymour on the morrow and showed him the dispatch.
The following day Seymour visited Nicholas in his office. The Tsar elaborated on his earlier theme and offered ‘as a gentleman’ a direct entente with Britain to impose a solution to the Eastern Question upon the other Great Powers and Turkey. Intrigued by the possibility of binding the Tsar’s policy to Britain, Seymour nevertheless pressed Nicholas on the dangers of his mobilization. It might cause a French counter demonstration and further uprisings of the Ottoman Christians against the financially weak Sultan. Nicholas answered with his own contrived response: ‘a French expedition to the Sultan’s dominions … would compel him to send his forces into Turkey without delay or hesitation, if the result of such an advance should prove to be the overthrow of the Great Turk, he (Nicholas) should regret the event’.12
Russian policy eventually played right into the hands of the French, who had no intention of invading Turkey. The British rejected both Rose’s direct approach of supporting France as the lesser danger to Turkey over Russia, and Cowley’s initial suggestion that France and Russia together impose a settlement on Turkey. The London Cabinet, or at least Russell, who was in contact with Stratford, preferred the latter’s more subtle policy of support for the Russians on the Holy Places issue, while the Porte remained the ultimate judge of any Franco-Russian compromise.13 This would allow Great Britain to be the ultimate protector of Turkish ‘sovereignty and independence’ and ensure that, if Britain and France had to unite to curb Russia, they would be uniting to defend Britain’s broad interests in the entire Ottoman Empire, not France’s narrow ones in the Levant. At this point Russian actions were threatening – since the Tsar was trying to operationalize plans for a surprise attack on Constantinople and the Dardanelles – but Russian words were moderate. France needed something more to help sway England. In the event, Austria hoping to steal a march with impunity, and assured of Russian support, helped French policy along.
VIENNA’S GAMBLE: COUNT LEININGEN’S MISSION
As we noted at the end of the preceding chapter, Emperor Francis Joseph readied some of his land and naval forces at the same time as Nicholas did and in response to a more or less simultaneous Turkish decision. The Austrian alert was due to the Porte’s projected campaign to subdue Montenegro and coincided with a new initiative on Buol’s part to induce the Turks to grant Austria control over the Bay of Cattaro and to resolve other outstanding bilateral disputes. The Turks, however, held to their guns, officially informed the Great Powers of Montenegro’s insubordination and offences and, now against ostensible French advice, prepared further for war. Klezl’s menacing Note of 7 January to call off the offensive and concede to Austrian demands regarding the enclaves did not impress Fuad.14
The next day Vienna received confirmation of Turkish armaments and obstinacy. Within a week, the Austrian military men convinced their young Emperor to send an extraordinary ambassador, ‘to place a fist under the nose of the Turks as Russia and England always do with success’. By this time Vienna knew of Nicholas’s extreme irritation with the Turks, his mobilization, his offer to help in Montenegro and, most probably, his planned extraordinary mission. However, the Austrian move was made independently and aimed not to irritate Britain and France by backing Russia in the Holy Places dispute. Rather, Buol stood for compromise there, while seeking to induce the ‘incompetent’ and ‘impotent’ Turks to recognize a joint Austro-Russian protectorate over the Balkan Christians and gain for Vienna the upper hand in Montenegro.15
The selection of the extraordinary envoy fell upon one of the highest-ranking imperial aristocrats and officials, a step-cousin of Queen Victoria, Field Marshall Count Christian von Leiningen. His chief, non-negotiable aim was to terminate the Turkish military-naval campaign. He was also to try to obtain a satisfactory response to Austria’s earlier demands: Austrian control over the enclaves, an apology for releasing Kossuth and other revolutionary refugees, dismissal of such persons serving in Omer’s army, assurances concerning the Christians of Bosnia and Herzegovina and settlement of Austrian commercial claims. Since Vienna, unlike St Petersburg, also recognized the Porte’s sovereignty over Montenegro and certainly did not wish to implode the Ottoman Empire, the Austrians were willing to compromise, just as they urged the French and Russians to do.16
Buol orchestrated Leiningen’s embassy in hopes of pulling off a swift victory without the intervention of the other powers. Vienna first announced the mission and its goals to the Russian chargé Felix Fonton on 21 January. Within ten days Leiningen had arrived at Constantinople. St Petersburg, already anxious over Menshikov’s illnesses and delays, learned of the mission only three days before Leiningen arrived. Nicholas approved of it, and immediately dispatched Colonel E.P. Kovalevsky as a special agent, ostensibly to assist the Austrians in curbing the Turks.17
The opportunistic French, armed with rumours that Austrian troops had actually entered Bosnia, pursued a three-pronged tactic. Drouyn urged moderation upon both the Austrians and the Turks, despite the request of the new Turkish ambassador, Veli Pasha, for outright support. The flip side of Drouyn’s admonitions was to threaten Austria with a French occupation of Savoy and the Rhineland, Prussian domination of Germany, and an Anglo-Russian war for Constantinople. On the other hand, Drouyn demanded cooperation from the British to defend the Ottomans from the Austro-Russian combination, got Russell to disavow Malmesbury’s earlier denial of Ottoman sovereignty over Montenegro, but held out the possibility of an Anglo-French division of the spoils, were Turkey to collapse.18
The British still would not fall into the French snare. However much Drouyn and the French chargé Charles Baudin might badger Cowley and Russell, the English feigned trust in Vienna’s intentions and continued to press France on the Holy Places. But the British would not fall into the Russian trap either. Brunnow could urge and remonstrate with Aberdeen and Russell day and night and only obtain from them the instructions for Rose and Cowley that London desired. To wit, France and Russia should make an agreement concerning the Holy Places that did not infringe upon Ottoman independence. In no way would Russell provoke France with a preliminary, preventive four-power arrangement, as Brunnow urged on several occasions. Moreover, Russell explicitly told Brunnow a week before Leiningen reached Constantinople that Britain did not wish the Montenegrin crisis to lead to a Russo-Turkish rupture. Foreshadowing Rose’s obstructionist tactics toward Menshikov, Russell virtually destroyed Russia’s diplomatic strategy. He insisted to Brunnow’s friend and hope in the Cabinet, Aberdeen, that Britain could not support Russia without knowing what the latter’s demands were.19
Leiningen, meanwhile, had his chance to work on the Turks. Arriving with little advance notice via a war steamer late on 31 January, he quickly saw the chief Turkish ministers, who consulted la Valette and Rose and were conciliatory concerning the refugees in the army and Austria’s commercial claims, but adamant regarding Montenegro and the enclaves. Leiningen had no more luck with the Sultan on 3 February, and so presented an ultimatum, threatening to leave on the 9th, if Austrian demands were not met.
The Turkish power élite, emboldened by news of victory from the Montenegrin front, wished to offer full resistance. They were dissuaded by the improvising la Valette and especially Rose, who backed the Ottoman claim to the enclaves, and insisted upon open access to Turkish ports, but at the same time tried to get Klezl to restrain Leiningen. It appears that the Belgian minister Blondeel and his Prussian counterpart Colonel Ludwig von Wildenbruch prompted Klezl a few days later to assure everybody that Austria desired only the status quo.
The Turks, however, covered their bets by resolving their substantial outstanding debts to Western bankers, and initiating plans to deploy 40,000 more Ottoman soldiers and up to 40,000 Egyptian troops (an unrealistic number) in the Balkans. The Austrians were not bluffing either, but issued specific orders to the generals to enter Bosnia and occupy Sarajevo if the Turks crossed Austrian territory or used the enclaves. Peace or war in Europe seemed to hinge on where the Turkish naval squadron sailed, how far Omer’s motley army marched, and how successful it was in Montenegro.
Still, in the absence of firm instructions to Rose and la Valette from London and Paris, Turkish fear of Russia was having its effects. Ozerov hinted that war might result from an unsatisfactory reply and on the night of 8 February convinced Fuad to negotiate with Leiningen. On the other hand, they all worked to get him to postpone his departure for three days. Fuad, then, aided by Rose and la Valette, who sometimes were stationed in adjoining rooms, had to convince a Turkish Grand Council and its ulema to modify the original Turkish response. The Turks were willing to listen to the British and French, but perhaps the deciding factor was the Austro-Russian difference over Montenegro’s status. The Turks agreed to call off the Montenegrin campaign ‘by a sovereign act emanating from the Sultan’ and to continue to negotiate concerning the enclaves.20 Austria’s minimal demands were met, and on 15 February la Valette courier-wired Paris that the mission had ended with a peaceful resolution.
The crisis was not over and would not be until Vienna was certain that the Turks were withdrawing. As late as 25 February the Austrians were preparing diplomatically for armed intervention on 5 or 6 March. On the 26th, however, Leiningen telegraphed from Trieste that his mission was accomplished except for the specific arrangements regarding the enclaves. He failed to mention, however, that his mission had forced the Porte into a heightened state of mobilization and a greater willingness to entertain financial dependence upon the West in order to defend against Russian or Russian and Austrian encroachments.21
FRENCH POSITIONING AND OTHER MATTERS
The diplomatic fallout from the Leiningen mission and Austria’s mobilization worked very much in France’s favour. Turkey was even more committed to arming against Russia. The British finally were alarmed, and remained essentially more fearful of Russia than of Austria. At the same time a British press scare over a nonexistent French threat to launch an invasion of the home islands was a hot issue in England from mid-February to early March. This storm in a teacup, whose genesis is obscure, actually served the interests of the English military and naval men and their budgetary demands. The French Foreign Ministry welcomed this test of cross-Channel ties, in which the ‘City’, with its investments in France and natural fear of a destructive war, was a mollifying factor. The British government was also accepting French assurances in good faith.22
At the same time, due to London’s continued lax policy toward revolutionary refugees, the French actually enjoyed better relations with Austria than did the British. Facing in February a nationalist-republican (Mazzinist) uprising in Milan and an assassination attempt by a Hungarian on the Emperor, Vienna was specifically annoyed with the English, Piedmontese and Swiss governments. Napoleon’s regime was sympathetic, having its own problems with refugees across the border in Belgium. Insofar as good relations with Vienna were the key to any sound British or French policy that aimed to counter Russia at Constantinople without provoking a general European war, the French were well placed to take the diplomatic lead. But if the Austrians instead joined with Russia against Turkey, then the junior Napoleon, as the most important other ally of the British and the Turks, could start to recover for France what his uncle had lost. On the other hand, were Russia to prove conciliatory, then the French would still score a diplomatic victory, having posed as Turkey’s champion and utilized gunboat diplomacy successfully. At least Napoleon III would have the prestige he desired. However, all of this depended upon what Russia did.
While the Austrians were dodging their own bullets in escalating a crisis and then deftly and fortuitously escaping unscathed, the Russians were digging a deeper pit for themselves. Even with the knowledge that the French were trying to make contingency arrangements with the British for a joint naval expedition to Turkish waters, Nicholas refused to use Napoleon’s conciliatory ploy of blaming and recalling la Valette as the pretext for calling off Russia’s mobilization.23 St Petersburg also simply refused to accept the fundamental lessons from the Leiningen mission: that Britain and France would act together to protect Turkey from Russia; that the Turks would make a deal with Austria to avoid greater problems with Russia; that Austria would make a deal with the Turks in order to avoid being caught in a Western-Russian embroglio over Turkey; and that armed diplomacy can succeed only if one has either overwhelming force or diplomatic goals that other Great Powers will support or allow.
The Russian government continued the line adopted in 1852 and was oblivious even to events in Turkey. There the Greeks and Latins still continued to squabble over the Holy Places and showed thereby that nothing had really been settled in December. The Greeks tried to stop the Latins from officiating in the Church of the Nativity and to control the Latins’ use of the Tomb of the Virgin. The Latin Patriarch Valerga complained about the French concessions and insisted that the Greeks should not obtain control over the repair of the cupola. On the other hand, news reached St Petersburg five days before Menshikov left that Aristarchi and Cyrill were ready to make their own deal with the Porte over the shrines. Rose meanwhile wanted the powerless Ozerov to accept some of the concessions to the Latins and suggested that a Turkish messenger convey to Russia a suitable ‘reparation’ for the Latin gains – an idea that reached St Petersburg five days after Menshikov left.24 Compromise over the Holy Places was as close and as distant as ever.
To win over British and ‘European’ opinion, the French and Russians engaged in their own diplomatic dance, which initiated a public debate between foreign ministries that lasted on and off until the outbreak of war. The Tsar took such polemics very seriously and demanded that attacks be answered. Drouyn’s dispatch of mid January to Castelbajac reasserted the French minimum claims, but pretended complete willingness otherwise to compromise and called for direct Franco-Russian negotiations. Nesselrode’s response via Kiselev in early February was issued at a time when Menshikov’s instructions were in the process of being completed. The Chancellor rejected such negotiations, as the French had fifteen months earlier, in favour of the fiction of bilateral parleys with Turkey. Instead he upbraided the French for their conduct and argued for the primacy of the 1757 firman, the precedence of the 1808 cupola reconstruction and the Sultan’s ‘autograph’ letter and hatt-i sherif (‘February’ firman) of 1852. With British approval, Drouyn then sent a toned down request to Nesselrode to end recriminations in the interest of conciliation on the basis of each side’s preferred firman, and the verbal storm abated for three months.25
BRITISH ADMONITIONS, RUSSIAN BLINDERS
This Franco-Russian war of words was no simple exercise in public diplomacy leading to an agreement. The French statement was an honest exposition of a real negotiating stance based on the Turkish promises and rulings of the previous year. The Russian statement, on the other hand, represented only a small part of a much larger package of unrealistic desiderata and demands that Nesselrode’s office prepared for Menshikov and put in final form in the first nine days of February, while Leiningen was using ultimatum diplomacy in Constantinople.26 Curiously, on 9 February, when Menshikov was departing, Seymour gave an already sceptical Russell a worst case view of the Tsar’s intentions toward Turkey and pretty well guessed what the mission cum mobilizations were all about.27
Meanwhile Nicholas, Nesselrode and Brunnow continued to negotiate in London and St Petersburg as if an entente with Britain against Turkish perfidy and Bonapartist ambitions were in the works. In response, both Aberdeen and Russell, without blatantly asserting that England and France would cooperate against Russia were Turkey threatened, got Brunnow to concede that a Franco-Russian agreement followed logically from the Tsar’s ‘peaceful intentions’. Brunnow also spared no effort or subtleties to convince his master of Britain’s strict neutrality and policy of the free hand. Aware of the gist of Nicholas’s approaches to Seymour, Brunnow penned a special memorandum in early February. It analysed the vicissitudes of the Anglo-French ententes since 1833, emphasized once more London’s unwillingness to enter into any preliminary agreements over the fate of other countries, and predicted that British policy would be fine for Russia so long as peace prevailed.28
At the same time Brunnow informed his superiors that the English were displeased with Austria’s failure to continue to support the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Aberdeen and Russell together, pushed by public opinion, had convinced Stratford to return to his post in Constantinople, and he was planning to go via Vienna. English jitters over the implications of Austrian, Russian and French policies had immediately mandated sending the strong man back to the Bosphorus, where he had protected British interests so well in the past.29
A few days later Russell, who had taken the ideas of Seymour and Stratford to heart, sent off London’s official response to Nicholas I’s secret offer of an entente in the Near East. Any preliminary agreement between Russia and Britain concerning Turkey would have to be communicated to the other Great Powers, would thus become public knowledge, and would hasten Turkey’s downfall. Were Turkey to collapse, any Russian possession of Constantinople, even temporary, was out of the question. The best Britain could promise was its own disinterestedness in controlling Constantinople and a pledge not to exclude Russia from any arrangement. Meanwhile, the wisest policy for all states to pursue was to avoid armed demonstrations and induce the Porte to continue on the road of legal and administrative reform. Russell slyly (and noncommittally) added: ‘The more the Turkish government adopts the rules of impartial law and equal administration, the less will the Emperor of Russia find it necessary to apply that exceptional protection, which his Imperial Majesty has found so burthensome and inconvenient, though no doubt prescribed by duty and sanctioned by law.’
Nicholas I’s marginal comments on the copy he received on 17 February or soon thereafter reveal his rather slipshod approach to a complex matter, as well as his fundamental divergence from British thinking. At the same time that Nesselrode was assuring Seymour that Montenegrin affairs were taking a turn for the better, the Tsar pencilled that Turkish actions in Montenegro ‘could easily lead to war’. Accepting that the best he could obtain from England was a statement of what she did not desire in case Turkey fell, he wrote: ‘This is a precious assurance, since it proves that perfect identity of interests exists between England and Russia.’ Concerning Russell’s desire for Ottoman legal and administrative reforms, Nicholas asserted with his sincere pessimism: ‘This may be done, but futilely, and it is this which can lead to war and all of its consequences.’30
The Tsar proceeded to pursue his secret negotiations via Seymour and for this, apparently, studied not so much Brunnow’s most recent, cautionary memorandum, as his equally guarded October 1851 position paper that outlined a partition settlement – but neither very well. Meeting Seymour once more at a Grand Duchess’s on 20 February, Nicholas again tried to emphasize that the Ottoman Empire was really ‘dying’, that Her Majesty’s ministers were mistaken if they thought otherwise, and that all he desired was a private preliminary understanding for a two-power diktat concerning what they did not desire from the corpse. The next day Nicholas and Seymour had a detailed tête-à-tête concerning Russell’s dispatch. The Tsar asserted that he would use any Turkish atrocities against Montenegro as a signal for war. He felt that he had Austria in his pocket regarding the Ottoman Empire and that he could take Constantinople without opposition. If Turkey fell, he would have to intervene to prevent civil strife between Muslims and Christians and to prevent the establishment of a hostile or revolutionary state on the Bosphorus or in the Balkans. Forgetting what he had said the night before about simply agreeing about what each side did not want, he proceeded as well to outline a division of territories that almost outlined the settlement of 1878-80 and gave Egypt and Cyprus to Britain, while Bulgaria and Serbia attained the status he attributed to the Danubian Principalities, that is, ‘an independent state under my protection’. What was missing from these conversations, and hence fatal for the Tsar, was any indication of Russian willingness to rescind or delay the mobilization or to deal with the French. If he really did believe that Austria would cooperate with him over Turkish affairs on any other basis than counter-revolutionary principles and the Convention of Münchengrätz – and it seems as if he did – then he was once more disregarding the manifest advice of his top diplomats. Seymour’s report of this conversation that painted the Russian Emperor as both incompetent and dangerous reached the Foreign Office on 6 March, when Menshikov was already in Constantinople frightening the Turks.31
While Nicholas I was simultaneously wooing the British and dispatching Menshikov with demands that were bound to alienate London, the Russians also lost an opportunity to work something out with the Turks in England. In mid February the Turkish envoy Musurus asked Brunnow that the Holy Places issue be separated from Montenegro and told him confidentially that the Porte was willing to repudiate Fuad and grant Russia a reparation that was acceptable to the Patriarch of Jerusalem. In one of his last conversations as Foreign Secretary, Russell told Brunnow that Menshikov’s demands and Musurus’s suggestions to Constantinople ought to be reconcilable. Nicholas and Nesselrode could also learn by the end of February what the British Cabinet considered to be reasonable. Musurus hinted that his son-in-law, Stephanos Vogorides, a high Patriarchal official and the Ottoman Commissioner for Moldavia, could broker a settlement in Constantinople. However, a Musurus-Brunnow deal concluded in Palmerston’s haunts was not what the Tsar envisioned. And Brunnow did not make it easy by telling Musurus to inform his government ‘that the eleventh hour has struck for it’.32
As it turned out, the Russian refusal to negotiate directly with the Turks in London or with France anywhere played into British hands by precluding a settlement behind London’s back. The future man of the hour, Viscount (since April 1852) Stratford de Redcliffe, understood perfectly the symmetry of the French and Russian positions, as he worked out Britain’s future approach. He would go back to Constantinople and use the Russian, Austrian and French threats to force a British orientation in foreign policy and domestic reform upon the errant Turks.33 Almost all of British diplomacy from February through to May 1853 reflected this thinking. If the other Great Powers were moderate, Britain could claim the credit. If not, Britain would be in a position to dominate the scene.
On the other hand, the anti-Bonapartist campaign was a perfect smoke screen for those who wished to fool themselves and forget what happened during the 1849 refugee crisis. Led in part by the ostensibly dovish, penny-pinching Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham, with his quest for more naval credits from Parliament, the new invasion scare clouded Britain’s necessary cooperation with the distrusted French, were Russia to threaten Turkey. Meanwhile, assuming that Russia would persist on a menacing path, Walewski was confident that the French could ignore Stratford’s arrogance and difficult personality and win him over to an anti-Russian stance.
Walewski was right. The Russian and Austrian mobilizations had incited the Turks even more and put the British on edge. Nicholas’s new, private initiatives for a partition had to be disturbing. The French, preparing for escalated Russian demands, were assertive but clever in posing as Turkey’s and Britain’s best friend. If Menshikov proceeded to follow his instructions, the French would obtain the desired British support and all the accompanying legitimization of the Bonapartist regime. No wonder the nervous and prescient Nesselrode wrote that he hoped that this dispute would end as ‘well’[!] as the one over the title of the new Emperor of the French.34
NOTES
1.Unckel: 60.
2.For British attitudes, the despatches of Walewski and Baudin (AMAE CP Angl. 687); CORR I; also Puryear ERSQ: 76–7.
3.Nes. to Nich. I, 19/31 Dec. 1852 (ZP 1.97).
4.Bapst: 296–306; Cwl. to Rus., 6 Jan. 1853 (CORR 1.88); Kis. to Nes., 29 Dec/10 Jan. 1852/3 (AVPR K (1853) 111); Dm., Thv. to Ctb., 15 Jan. 1853 (FR I; Case, Thouvenel, 62); Drn. to Baudin., 17 Jan. 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 688).
5.DM22 Dec. 1852/11 1853; 2–3/14–15 Jan. 1853; Ori., Nes. to Mnsh., 23 Dec/4 Jan. 1852/3, 3/15 Jan. 1853 (TsGAVMF 19/3/217, 19/3/204); Nes. to Brw., 2/14 Jan. 1853 (TsGADA 111/115); cf. Tarlé VIII: 156: the standard, unsubstantiated view, that Orlov was also asked before Menshikov.
6.DM 1/13 NOV.–1/13 Feb. 1852/3.
7.Lav. to Drn., 24 Dec, 5 Jan., 1852–53 (AMAE CP Turq. 310–11); Oz. to Nes., 14/26 Dec 1852 (AVPR GA V–A2 522); DM 30 Dec/ 11 Jan. 1852/3.
8.Nich. I memo, 7/19 Jan. 1853 (ZP 1.210); Lazarev, Putiatin, Shestakov memos, 1835–50; Volkov, Miller memos, 15/27, 19/31 Jan. 1853; Mnsh. to Nich. I, 16/28 Dec 1852 (TsGAVMF 19/1/191, 19/l/276b, 19/4/92).
9.Du Plat (Warsaw) to Rus. (PRO FO 65/435); Nes. memo with gloss, 24 March/5 April 1853 (AVPR K 30).
10.Brw. to Nes, 12, 19/24, 31 Dec. 1852, received. 24, 27 Dec/5, 8 Jan. 1852/3 (AVPR K 1852 80); Nes. memos, 13/25 Dec, 20 Dec/1 Jan. 1852/3: the later memo, not the earlier one, responded to Nicholas’s queries concerning the partition issue: cf. Temperley ENEC: 301; Henderson: 243, only from British sources.
11.KfZh 321 (28–29 Dec/9–10 Jan. 1852/3); for Seymour’s relations with Nicholas and Nesselrode, CORR I.91ff; originals, PRO 65/424.
12.KhZh 322 (31 Dec./12 Jan. 1852/3); Seym, to Rus., 22 Jan. 1853 (CORR 1.120).
13.Rus. to Rose, Cwl, 28–29 Jan. 1853 (CORR 1.108–9).
14.For this phase of the Austro-Turkish crisis: AGK 1.1–29; la Valette’s and Ozerov’s dispatches (AMAE CP Turq. 311, AVPR K 20, some copies in HHSA PA X 38), and Unckel: 60ff.; here also Klezl to Fuad, 7 Jan. 1853 (HHSA PA XII 46).
15.Unckel: 68; Buoi to Mensdorff, 21 Jan. 1853 (HHSA PA XII 37); Baudin to Drn., 14 Jan. 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 688).
16.Buoi to Leiningen, 22 Jan. 1853 (AGK 1.8).
17.Fnt. to Ness., 9/21 Jan., received 16/28 Jan. 1853 (AVPR K 145); Nes. to Fnt., Kovalevsky, 19/31 Jan. 1853 (HHSA PA X 38); DM 11–17/23–29 Jan. 1853.
18.Drn. to Baudin, 14, 27 Jan. 1853; Lav., 28–29 Jan. 1853 (AMAE CP Angl. 688, Turq. 311); Hüb. to Buoi, 6 Feb. 1853 (AGK 1.1.18).
19.For England, Baudin’s, Walewski’s, and Brunnow’s correspondence (AMAE CP Angl. 686, AVPR K 73); also Rus. to Ab., Rose, Cwl., 27–29 Jan. (AbC X; CORR 1.108–10).
20.Lav. to Drn., 14 Jan. 1853 (AMAE CP Turq. 311).
21.Also useful here are the Belgian, Dutch and Swedish reports.
22.Also Martin: 103–4; Lambert PRW: 17.
23.Martens XV: 271–2; Kis. to Nes., 13/25 Feb. 1852 (AVPR Kill).
24.Oz. to Nes., 14/26 Jan., 24 Jan./5 Feb., received 24 Jan./5 Feb., 4/16 Feb. 1853 (AVPR GA V–A2 523, K 20).
25.FR 1; CORR 1.124; Cwl. to Cln., 10 March 1853 (CORR 1.157).
26.Analysed below in Ch. 9., the first section.
27.Seym, to Rus., 9–10 Feb. 1852 (PRO 30/22/10; CORR 1.140).
28.Brw., ‘Politique générale’, 24 Jan./5 Feb., received 2/14 Feb., 1853 (AVPR K 73).
29.Lane-Poole II: 234; to my knowledge, no one has elucidated precisely how Stratford was reappointed.
30.Rus. to Seym., 9 Feb. 1853, French trans., with Nich. I’s glosses (ZP 1.99).
31.Seym, to Rus., 21–22 Jan. 1853 (CORR 1.155–6).
32.Brw. to Nes., 9/21, 13/25 Feb. (AVPR K 73); Howard’s published extracts omit Brunnow’s talks with Musurus and incorrectly paint Brunnow as not reporting Aberdeen’s warnings: ‘Brunnow’s Reports on Aberdeen’, CHJ 4 (1932–4): 313–21.
33.Cln. to Str., 25 Feb. 1853 (CORR 1.146).
34.Nes. to Hélène Chreptowitch, 15/27 Feb. 1853 (NLPX).