exchange for keeping the Dardanelles closed to all foreign warships. Although, contrary to widespread supposition at the time and since, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi did not provide for the passage of Russian men-of-war through the Straits - a point established by Mosely - it did represent a signal victory for
Russia: the empire of the tsars became the special ally and, to a degree, protector of its ancient, decaying enemy, thereby acquiring important means to interfere in its affairs and influence its future.
The events of 1830-31 in Europe, and to a lesser extent recurrent conflicts in the Near East, impressed on Nicholas I the necessity for close co-operation and joint action of the conservative powers. Austria and in a certain measure Prussia felt the same need, with the result that the three eastern European monarchies drew together by the end of 1833. Agreements were concluded at a meeting at Munchengratz, attended by the emperors of Russia and Austria and the crown prince of Prussia, and at a meeting soon after in Berlin. Russia came to a thorough understanding with the Hapsburg empire, especially regarding their common struggle against nationalism and their desire to maintain Turkish rule in the Near East. Similarly, the Russian agreement with Prussia stressed joint policies in relation to partitioned Poland. More far-reaching in its provisions and its implications was the Convention of Berlin signed by all three powers on October 15, 1833:
Their Majesties… recognize that each independent Sovereign has the right to call to his aid, in case of internal troubles as well as in case of an external threat to his country, every other independent Sovereign… In the event that the material help of one of the three Courts, the Austrian, the Prussian, and the Russian, is requested, and if any power would want to oppose this by the force of arms, these three Courts would consider as directed against each one of them every hostile action undertaken with this goal in view.
The agreements of 1,833 were thus meant to protect not only the immediate interests of the signatory powers, but also the entire conservative order in Europe. Nicholas I in particular proved eager to police the continent. It was the Russian army that moved quickly in 1846 to occupy the city of Cracow and suppress the uprising there, and it was the Russian emperor who insisted to the somewhat slow and reluctant Austrian government that this remnant of free Poland must become a part of the Hapsburg state, as had been previously arranged among the eastern European monarchies. The revolution of February 1848 in France opened a new chapter in the struggle between the old order and the rising forces of the modern world in nineteenth-century Europe. While the famous story of Nicholas I telling his guests at a ball to saddle their horses because a republic had just been proclaimed in France is not exact, the Russian autocrat did react immediately and violently to the news from Paris. Although delighted by the fall of Louis-Philippe whom he hated as a usurper and traitor to legitimism, the tsar could not tolerate a revolution, so he broke diplomatic relations with France and assembled three or four hundred thousand troops in west-
ern Russia in preparation for a march to the Rhine. But rebellion spread faster than the Russian sovereign's countermeasures: in less than a month Prussia and Austria were engulfed in the conflagration, and the entire established order on the continent began rapidly to crumble into dust.
In the trying months that followed, Nicholas I rose to his full stature as the defender of legitimism in Europe. The remarkable ultimate failures of the initially successful revolutions of 1848 and 1849 can best be explained in terms of the specific political, social, and economic conditions of the different countries involved. Still, the Russian monarch certainly did what he could to tip the balance in favor of reaction. Following a strange and thunderous manifesto against revolution, he proceeded to exercise all his influence to oppose the numerous uprisings that had gripped the continent. For example, the Russian government supplied Austria with a loan of six million rubles and pointed out to Great Britain that, if an outside power were to support an Italian state against the Hapsburgs, Russia would join Austria as a full-fledged combatant. The first Russian military intervention to suppress revolution occurred in July 1848 in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, where Russia acted for itself and for Turkey to defeat the Rumanian national movement. The most important action took place in the summer of 1849, when Nicholas I heeded the Austrian appeal, on the basis of the agreements of 1833, to help combat the revolt in Hungary, assigning Paskevich and almost two hundred thousand troops for the campaign. The successful Russian intervention in Hungary - which earned the undying hatred of the Hungarians - was directed in part against the Polish danger, as Polish revolutionaries were fighting on the Hungarian side. But its chief rationale lay in the Russian autocrat's determination to preserve the existing order in Europe, for the Austrian empire was one of the main supports of that order. Russia also sided with Austria in the Austrian dispute with Prussia over hegemony in Germany and thus helped the Hapsburgs to score a major diplomatic victory in the Punctation of Olmiitz of November 29, 1850, when the Prussians abandoned their attempt to seize the initiative in Germany and accepted a return to the
The impressive and in certain ways dominant position which Russia gained with the collapse of the revolutions of 1848-49 on the continent failed to last. In fact, the international standing of the 'gendarme of Europe' and the country he ruled was much stronger in appearance than in reality: liberalism and nationalism, although defeated, were by no means dead, and they carried European public opinion from Poland and Hungary to France and England; even the countries usually friendly to the tsar complained of his interference with their interests, as in the case of Prussia, or at least resented his overbearing solicitude, as was true of Austria. On the other hand, Nicholas I himself - in the opinion of some specialists - re-
acted to his success by becoming more blunt, uncompromising, doctrinaire, and domineering than ever before. The stage was set for a debacle.
However, when the debacle did come, the accompanying circumstances proved to be exceedingly complex, and they were related especially to issues in the Near East. There the resumption of hostilities between Turkey and Egypt in 1839-40 undid the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. European powers acted together to impose a settlement upon the combatants, under terms of the Treaty of London of July 15, 1840, and they also signed the Straits Convention of July 13, 1841. The Convention, in which Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and France participated, reaffirmed the closure of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to all foreign warships in time of peace, substituting an international guarantee of the five signatories for the separate treaty between Russia and Turkey. Nicholas I proved willing to co-operate with the other states, and, in the same spirit, made a particular effort during the years following to come to a thorough understanding with Great Britain. In the summer of 1844 he personally traveled to England and discussed the Near Eastern situation and prospects with Lord Aberdeen, the foreign secretary. The results of these conversations were summarized in an official Russian memorandum, prepared by Nesselrode, which the British government accepted as accurate. According to its provisions, Russia and Great Britain were to maintain the Turkish state as long as possible, and, in case of its impending dissolution, the two parties were to come in advance to an understanding concerning the re-partitioning of the territories involved and other problems.
Although the crucial Russo-British relations in the decades preceding the Crimean War have been variously explicated and assessed by different scholars, such as Puryear who saw the picture from the Russian side and Temperley who observed it from the British side, several elements in the situation stand out clearly. Nicholas I's apparently successful agreement with Great Britain had an illusory and indeed a dangerous character. The two main points of the understanding - the preservation and the partitioning of Turkey - were, in a sense, contradictory, and the entire agreement was, therefore, especially dependent on identical, or at least very similar, interpretation by both partners of developments in the Near East, a degree of harmony never to be achieved. Moreover, the form of the agreement also contributed to a certain ambivalence and difference of opinion: while Nicholas I and his associates considered it to be a firm arrangement of fundamental importance, the British apparently thought of it more as a secret exchange of opinions not binding on the subsequent premiers and foreign ministers of Her Majesty's government. The Russian emperor's
talks in January and February of 1853 with Sir Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador, when the tsar dwelt on the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire and offered a plan of partition, served only to emphasize the gulf between the two states. The complex and unfortunate entanglement with Great Britain was one of the chief bases for Nicholas I's mistaken belief that his Near Eastern policy had strong backing in Europe.
In 1850 a dispute began in the Holy Land between Catholics and Orthodox in regard to certain rights connected with some of the most sacred shrines of Christendom. Countering Napoleon Ill's championing of the Catholic cause, Nicholas I acted in his usual direct and forceful manner by sending Prince Alexander Menshikov, in
