The Crimean War

for Britain to make good on its failure to oppose the Russians on the Danube in 1848–9.³²

London had a large community of Romanian exiles from the previous Russian occupation of the principalities who formed an influential pressure-group for British intervention that enjoyed the support of several members of the cabinet, including Palmerston and Gladstone, and many more MPs who lobbied Parliament with questions about the Danube. The Romanian leaders had close connections to the Italian exiles in London and were part of the Democratic Committee established by Mazzini which by this time had also been joined by Greek and Polish exiles in the British capital. The Romanians were careful to distance themselves from the revolutionary politics of these nationalists, and were well aware of the need to tailor their arguments to the liberal interests of the British middle classes. With the support of several national newspapers and periodicals, they succeeded in getting across to the British public the idea that the defence of the principalities against Russian aggression was vitally important for the broader interests of liberty and free trade on the Continent. In a series of almost daily articles in the Morning Advertiser, Urquhart joined their calls for intervention in the principalities, although he was more concerned about the defence of Turkish sovereignty and Britain’s free-trade interests than about the Romanian national cause. As the Russian invasion of the principalities progressed, Romanian propagandists grew bolder and made direct appeals to the public on speaking tours. In all their speeches the main theme was the European crusade for freedom against Russian tyranny – a rallying cry that was at times extremely fanciful in its vision of a Christian uprising for liberty in the Ottoman Empire. Constantine Rosetti, for example, told a crowd in Plymouth that ‘an army of 100,000 Romanians stood ready on the Danube to join the soldiers of democracy’.³³

While the nature of the Russian occupation of the principalities remained unclear, the British government hestitated over where to send the Royal Navy. Palmerston and Russell wanted British warships in the Bosporus to prevent the Russian fleet attacking Constantinople; but Aberdeen preferred to hold the navy back in order not to threaten a negotiated peace. In the end a compromise was reached and the fleet was kept on a war footing at Besika Bay, just outside the Dardanelles, close enough, so the thinking went, to deter a Russian attack on the Turkish capital but not close enough to provoke a conflict between Britain and Russia. Then in July the Russian occupation of the principalities began to assume a more serious character. Reports reached the European capitals that the hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia had been ordered by the Russians to break off relations with the Porte and to pay tribute to the Tsar instead. The news caused alarm because it suggested that Russia’s real intention was to take possession of the principalities on a permanent basis, despite the assurances of the Tsar’s manifesto to the contrary.³⁴

The reaction of the European powers was immediate. The Austrians mobilized 25,000 troops on their southern frontiers, mainly as a warning to the Serbs and other Habsburg Slavs not to rise up in support of the Russian invasion. The French put their fleet on a war footing, and the British followed them. Stratford Canning, who had first heard the news of the order to the hospodars, and who was eager to make amends for the failure of the British to make a stand against the last Russian invasion in 1848–9, called for decisive military action to defend the principalities. He warned the Foreign Office that ‘the whole of European Turkey, from the frontier of Austria to that of Greece’, was about to fall to the Russians; that if they crossed the Danube there would be uprisings by Christians everywhere in the Balkans; that the Sultan and his Muslim subjects were prepared for war against Russia, provided they could rely on the support of Britain and France; and that while it would be a misfortune for Britain to be dragged into a war whose consequences were so unpredictable, it would be better to deal with the danger of Russia now than later on, when it would be too late.³⁵

The threatening nature of the Russian occupation raised a bundle of security concerns for the European powers, none of which could afford to stand by while Russia dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Britain, France, Austria and Prussia (which basically followed Austria’s lead) now agreed to act together in a peace initiative. The diplomatic lead was taken by Austria, the key guarantor of the Vienna Settlement, of which it was the major beneficiary. The Austrians were heavily dependent on the Danube for their foreign trade and could not tolerate the Russian annexation of the principalities, yet could least afford a European war against Russia in which they were likely to bear the heaviest burden. What the Austrians proposed was probably impossible: a diplomatic solution that would allow the Tsar to drop his demands and withdraw from the principalities without losing face.

The peace process involved an elaborate exchange of diplomatic notes between the European capitals with endless variations on the precise wording of a formula to satisfy the interests of Russia and underline the independence of Turkey. The culmination of this activity was the Vienna Note drafted by the foreign ministers of the four powers at a conference in Vienna on behalf of the Turkish government on 28 July. Like all diplomatic documents designed to end hostilities, the wording of the Note was deliberately vague: the Porte agreed to uphold the treaty rights of Russia to protect the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan. The Tsar saw the Note as a diplomatic victory and agreed to sign it at once ‘without modifications’ on 5 August. The trouble started when the Turks (who had not even been consulted on the drafting of the Note) asked for details to be clarified. They were concerned that the Note had not set proper limits on the Russian right to intervene in Ottoman affairs – a concern that was soon proved to be justified when a private diplomatic document was leaked to a Berlin newspaper showing that the Russians had interpreted the Note to mean that they could intervene to protect the Orthodox anywhere throughout the Ottoman Empire and not just in areas where a specific conflict had occurred, as in the Holy Lands. The Sultan suggested a couple of minor verbal alterations to the Note – forms of words but important to a government that was being asked to sign the Note as a concession to Russia or face the loss of two of its richest provinces. He also wanted the Russians to evacuate the principalities before the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, and a guarantee from the four powers that Russia would not invade them again. These were reasonable demands for a sovereign power to insist upon, but the Tsar refused to accept the Turkish modifications, on the grounds that he had agreed to sign the Note unchanged, although his suspicion that Stratford Canning had encouraged the Turks to dig in their heels was also not irrelevant. In early September the Vienna Note was reluctantly abandoned by the four powers and, with Turkey on the brink of declaring war on Russia, negotiations had to start again.³⁶

In fact, contrary to the Tsar’s suspicions, Stratford Canning had played a minor role in the Turkish decision to reject the Note. The British ambassador was well known for his fierce defence of Turkish sovereignty and his hatred of Russia, so it was not surprising that he was held responsible for the unexpected refusal of the Turks to go along with the diplomatic solution imposed on them by the Western powers to appease the Tsar. The idea that Stratford had pushed the Turks towards a war against Russia was later taken up by the Foreign Office, which took the view that the ambassador might have persuaded the Turks to accept the Note, if he had gone about it in the right manner, but that he had chosen not to because ‘he is himself no better than a Turk, and has lived there so long, and is animated with such personal hatred of the [Russian] Emperor, that he is full of the Turkish spirit; and this and his temper together have made him take a part directly contrary to the wishes and instructions of his government’.³⁷ Looking back on the failure of peace on 1 October, Foreign Secretary Lord George Clarendon concluded that it would have been better to have had a more moderate man than Stratford as ambassador in the Turkish capital. The game of deceit the Russians played ‘called forth all his Russian antipathies and made him from the first look to war as the best thing for Turkey. In fact no settlement would have been satisfactory to him that did not humiliate Russia.’³⁸ But this was unfair to Stratford, who took the blame for the failure of the government. The truth is that Stratford did his best to get the Porte to accept the Note, but his influence on the Turks was steadily declining in the summer months, as Constantinople was swept by demonstrations calling for a ‘holy war’ against Russia.

The invasion of the principalities stirred a powerful combination of Muslim feeling and Turkish nationalism in the Ottoman capital. The Porte had roused the Muslim population against the invasion, and now could not contain the ensuing religious emotions. The language of the metropolitan ulema was increasingly belligerent, raising fears among the devout that the invaders would destroy their mosques and build churches in their place. Meanwhile the Porte kept the public ignorant about the Vienna initiative, claiming that any peace would come ‘solely from the