The Crimean War

Menshikov towards the Porte. Convinced that the Russians were preparing to destroy Turkey, Russell was inclined to let their fleets advance into the Bosporus and seize the Turkish capital so that Britain and France could use the defence of the Straits Convention as a reason to launch a full-out naval war against Russia in the Black Sea and the Baltic. Supported by Palmerston, Russell would have had the majority of the British public on his side. But the other ministers were more cautious. They were wary of the French, whom they still regarded as a military threat, and disagreed with Russell that an Anglo-French alliance would counteract the challenge of the French steam fleet to British maritime power. They took the view that the French had provoked the Russians, who deserved a concession in the Holy Lands, and trusted the assurances of Baron Brunov (‘as a gentleman’) that the Tsar’s intentions remained peaceful. On this basis they rejected Rose’s request for a squadron. It was not up to charges d’affaires, it seemed to them, to call up fleets or decide matters of war and peace; and Rose had allowed himself to be swayed by ‘the alarm of the Turkish government … and the rumours that obtained general credit at Constantinople of the advancing army and fleet of Russia’. The ministers decided that they would wait for Stratford Canning to return to the Turkish capital and sort out a peaceful settlement.¹⁵

News of Rose’s summons to Dundas arrived in Paris on 16 March.

In a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation three days later, Drouyn de Lhuys, the Foreign Minister, painted a picture of imminent catastrophe: ‘The last hour of Turkey has been tolled, and we must expect to see the double- headed eagle [of the Romanovs] planted on the towers of St Sophia.’ Drouyn rejected the idea of sending in a fleet, at least not until the British did, in case they should be isolated in Europe, which feared the reassertion of Napoleonic France. This was also the position of the other ministers, except Persigny, who claimed that Britain ‘would rejoice and join our side’ if France took a stand ‘to stop the march of Russia towards Constantinople’. For Persigny it was a question of national honour. The army that had carried out the coup d’etat of 2 December was an ‘army of praetorians’ with a heritage of glory to defend. He warned Napoleon that if he temporized, as his ministers advised, ‘the first time you pass before your troops, you will see their faces saddened, the ranks silenced, and you will feel the ground shake beneath your feet. So, as you well know, to win back the army you must take some risks; and you, Messieurs, who would have peace at any price, you will be thrown into a terrible conflagration.’ At this point the Emperor, who had been wavering over what to do, succumbed to the argument of Persigny and ordered the advance of the French fleet, not as far as the Dardanelles, but to Salamis, in Greek waters, as a warning to the Russians that ‘France was not disinterested in what took place in Constantinople’.¹⁶

There were three main reasons behind his decision to mobilize the fleet. First, as Persigny had intimated, there were rumours of a plot against Napoleon in the army, and a show of force was a good way to nip this in the bud. ‘I must tell you’, Napoleon wrote to Empress Eugenie in the winter of 1852, ‘that serious plots are afoot in the army. I am keeping my eye on all this, and I reckon that by one means or another, I can prevent any outbreak: perhaps by means of a war.’ Secondly, Napoleon was anxious to restore France as a naval power in the Mediterranean – for everybody knew, in the words of Horace de Viel-Castel, the director of the Louvre, that ‘the day when the Mediterranean is partitioned between Russia and England, France will no longer be counted among the great powers’. In a conversation with Stratford Canning, who passed through Paris on his way from London to Constantinople, Napoleon was concerned to highlight France’s interests in the Mediterranean. Stratford wrote this memorandum of their conversation on 10 March:

He said that he had no wish to make the Mediterranean a French lake – to use a well-known expression – but that he should like to see it made a European one. He did not explain the meaning of this phrase. If he meant that the shores of the Mediterranean should be exclusively in the hands of Christendom, the dream is rather colossal … . The impression left upon my mind … is that Louis Napoleon, meaning to be well with us, at least for the present, is ready to act politically in concert with England at Constantinople; but it remains to be seen whether he looks to the restoration of Turkish power, or merely to the consequences of its decay, preparing to avail himself of them hereafter in the interests of France.

But above all, it was Napoleon’s desire to ‘act … in concert with England’ and establish an Anglo-French alliance that led him to mobilize the fleet. ‘Persigny is right,’ he told his ministers on 19 March. ‘If we send our fleet to Salamis, England will be forced to do as much, and the union of the two fleets will lead to the union of the two nations against Russia.’ According to Persigny, the Emperor reasoned that the dispatch of the fleet would appeal to British Russophobia, win support from the bourgeois press and force the hand of the more cautious Aberdeen government to join France.¹⁷

In fact, the British fleet remained at Malta while the French sailed from Toulon on 22 March. The British were furious with the French for escalating the crisis, and urged them not to advance beyond Naples, giving Stratford time to get to Constantinople and arrange a settlement, before moving their gunboats into the Aegean Sea. Stratford arrived in the Turkish capital on 5 April. He found the Turks already in a mood to stand up to Menshikov – nationalist and religious emotions had become highly charged – although there were divisions about how far they should go and how long they should wait for the military backing of the West. These arguments became entangled in the long-standing personal rivalry between the Grand Vizier Mehmet Ali and Reshid, Stratford’s old ally, who was then out of power. Hearing that Mehmet Ali was about to make a compromise with Menshikov, Stratford urged him to stand firm against the Russians, assuring him (on his own authority) that the British fleet would back him if need be. The key thing, he advised, was to separate the conflict in the Holy Lands (where Russia had a legitimate claim for the restoration of its treaty rights) and the broader demands of the draft sened that had to be rejected to maintain Turkish sovereignty. It was vital for the Sultan to grant religious rights by direct sovereign authority rather than by any mechanism dictated by Russia. In Stratford’s view, the Tsar’s real intention was to use his protection of the Greek Church as a Trojan horse for the penetration and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.¹⁸

The Grand Council heeded his advice when it met to discuss Menshikov’s demands on 23 April. It agreed to negotiate on the Holy Places but not on the broader question concerning Russia’s protection of the Sultan’s Orthodox subjects. On 5 May Menshikov came back with a revised version of the sened (without the life appointment of the patriarchs) but with an ultimatum that if it was not signed within five days he would leave Constantinople and break off diplomatic relations. Stratford urged the Sultan to hold firm, and the Ottoman cabinet rejected the ultimatum on 10 May. In a desperate bid to satisfy the Tsar’s demands without recourse to war, Menshikov gave the Turks four more days to sign the revised sened. During this reprieve, Stratford and Reshid engineered the dismissal of Mehmet Ali, allowing Reshid to take over at the Foreign Ministry. Following the advice of the British ambassador, Reshid was in favour of a firmer line against the Russians on the understanding that this was the surest way to reach a settlement on the religious question without compromising the sovereignty of the Sultan. Reshid asked for five more days from Menshikov. News had come from the Ottoman ambassador in London, Kostaki Musurus, that Britain would defend the sovereign rights of the Ottoman Empire, and this emboldened the new Turkish Foreign Minister, who needed time to win support for a firm stand against the Russians among his fellow-ministers.

On 15 May the Grand Council met again. The ministers and Muslim leaders were fired up with anti-Russian sentiment, much of it encouraged by Stratford, who had called on many of them personally to urge them to stand firm. The Council refused Menshikov’s demands. Receiving the news that evening, Menshikov replied that Russia would now break off relations with the Porte but that he would wait a few more days in the Turkish capital, citing storms in the Black Sea as a reason to delay his departure, though really he was hoping for a last-minute deal. Finally, on 21 May, the Russian coat of arms was taken down from the embassy and Menshikov departed for Odessa on the Thunderer.¹⁹

The failure of the Menshikov mission convinced the Tsar that he needed to resort to military means. On 29 May he wrote to Field Marshal Paskevich that if he had been more aggressive from the start he might have been successful in extracting concessions from the Turks. He did not want a war – he feared the intervention of the Western powers – but he was now prepared to use the threat of war, to shake the Turkish Empire to its foundations, to get his way and enforce what he saw as Russia’s treaty rights to protect the Orthodox. He revealed his thinking (and state of mind) to Paskevich:

The consequence [of Menshikov’s failure] is war. However, before I get to