The Crimean War

Almost a year earlier, in March 1854, Palmerston had outlined his ‘beau ideal of the result of the war’ in a letter to the British cabinet:

Aaland (islands in the Baltic) and Finland restored to Sweden. Some of the German provinces of Russia on the Baltic ceded to Prussia. A substantive kingdom of Poland re-established as a barrier between Germany and Russia … The Crimea, Circassia and Georgia wrested from Russia, the Crimea and Georgia given to Turkey, and Circassia either independent or given to the Sultan as Suzerain. Such results, it is true, could be accomplished only by a combination of Sweden, Prussia and Austria, with England, France and Turkey, and such results presuppose great defeats of Russia. But such results are not impossible, and should not be wholly discarded from our thoughts.

At that time Palmerston’s ambitious plans had been received with a good deal of scepticism in the British cabinet (as mentioned earlier, Aberdeen had objected that they would involve the Continent in a new ‘Thirty Years War’). But, now that Palmerston was the Prime Minister, Russia had been weakened and the hardships of the winter were coming to an end, the prospect of a larger war did not seem impossible at all.⁴

Behind the scenes of the British government there were powerful supporters of a broader European war against Russia. Sir Harry Verney, for example, the Liberal MP for Buckingham,^at published a pamphlet, Our Quarrel with Russia, which circulated widely among diplomats and military leaders in the spring of 1855. It was sent by Stratford Canning, who was clearly sympathetic to its ideas, to Palmerston and Clarendon as well as to Sir William Codrington, the commander of the Light Division who was shortly to become the commander-in-chief of the eastern army, in whose papers it can still be found. Verney argued that Britain should work harder to involve the Germans in a war against Russia. Germany had a lot to fear from Russian aggression, Berlin being only a few days’ march from the borders of the Tsar’s empire; it was mainly Protestant, so had much in common with Britain; and strategically it was the ideal base for a war to liberate the Christian West from the ‘barbaric’ menace of Russia. In terms familiar to the standard discourse of European Russophobia, Verney argued that the Russians should be driven ‘eastwards beyond the Dnieper to the Asiatic steppe’.

Russia is a country which makes no advances in any intellectual or industrial pursuits, and wholly omits to render her influence beneficial to the world. The government from the highest to the lowest is thoroughly corrupt. It lives on the intrigues of agents and on the reports of highly paid spies at home and abroad. It advances into countries more civilized and better governed than its own, and strives to reduce them to its own level of debasement. It opposes the circulation of the Bible and the work of the missionary … . The Greeks in Turkey have so little maintained the Christian character that they have done more to injure Christianity than ever the Turks have been able to effect; they are the allies throughout the Turkish empire on whose aid the Russians rely in furnishing them with intelligence and carrying out their designs. Russia seeks to obtain excellence only in the arts of war – for that there is no sum she will not pay.

Our contest with her involves the question, whether the world shall make progress, according to the highest interpretation of that word, in civilisation, with all its most precious accompaniments. On its issue depend religious, civil, social and commercial liberty; the empire of equal laws; order consistent with freedom; the circulation of the Word of God; and the promulgation of principles founded on the Scripture.⁵

Napoleon was generally sympathetic to Palmerston’s idea of using the war to redraw the map of Europe. But he was less interested in the anti-Russian campaign in the Caucasus, which mainly served British interests. Moreover, his fear of domestic opposition, which had risen to alarming levels after the army’s failure to achieve an early victory, made him wary of committing France to a long and open-ended war. Napoleon was torn. On a practical level, his instinct was to concentrate on the Crimea, to capture Sevastopol as a symbol of the satisfaction of French ‘honour’ and ‘prestige’ which he needed to strengthen his regime, and then bring the war to a quick and ‘glorious’ end. But the vision of a European war of liberation on the model of the great Napoleon was never far away from the Emperor’s thoughts. He flirted with the idea that the French might rediscover their enthusiasm for the war if it offered them that old revolutionary dream of a Europe reconstructed out of democratic nation states.

Napoleon wanted to return the Crimea to the Ottoman Empire. He was a strong supporter of Italian independence, believing that the war was an opportunity to impose this on the Austrians by giving them control of the Danubian principalities as compensation for the loss of Lombardy and Venetia. But above all he sympathized with the Polish cause, the most pressing foreign issue in French politics. He thought the Austrians and Prussians might agree to the restoration of an independent Poland as a buffer state between themselves and Russia, whose expansionism had been demonstrated by the war, and he tried to persuade Palmerston that the re-creation of a Polish kingdom should be made a condition of any peace negotations. But the British were afraid that the restoration of Poland would give new life to the Holy Alliance and even spark revolutionary wars in Italy and Germany; if that happened, Europe might become entangled in a new round of Napoleonic Wars.

All these factors contributed to the failure of the Vienna Conference, the diplomatic peace initiative sponsored by the Austrians, in the first months of 1855. Austria had joined the military alliance with the Western powers the previous December, but not in order to encourage a prolonged war against Russia which would only damage its own economy and unsettle its Slav minorities. Rather, the Austrians hoped to use their new alliance to pressure the British and the French to negotiate a peace with the Russians under their own patronage at Vienna.

January was a good moment to return to diplomacy. The military stalemate and hardships of the winter had increased public pressure on the Western governments to find a conclusion to the war. The French, in particular, were happy to explore the diplomatic possibilities. Senior ministers such as Drouyn and Thouvenal had begun to doubt that a military victory could be achieved. They feared that the longer the fighting continued – and the French were doing most of it – the more the public would react against a war which they already felt was being fought for mainly British interests. Such considerations helped to bring Napoleon round to the idea of a peace initiative – he hoped it might promote his ideals in Poland and Italy – even though he remained an ally of Palmerston, who did not believe in or desire peace. In the early weeks of 1855, however, when Palmerston was obliged to display a degree of moderation to form a cabinet with the peace-loving Peelites, even he was under pressure to consider (or give the appearance of considering) the Austrian initiatives.

On 7 January, Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the Tsar’s ambassador in Vienna,^au announced Russia’s acceptance of the Four Points, including the controversial third point ending Russian domination of the Black Sea. In the last weeks of his life Nicholas was eager to get peace talks under way. With the entry of Austria into a military alliance with the Western powers, he had been haunted by the prospect of a general European war against Russia, and was prepared to look for an ‘honourable’ exit from the conflict in the Crimea. The British were mistrustful of the Russians’ intentions. On 9 January Queen Victoria informed Clarendon, the Foreign Minister, that in her view Russia’s acceptance of the Four Points was no more than a ‘diplomatic manoeuvre’ designed to stop the allies from capturing the Crimea. The Queen believed that the military campaign should not stop, that Sevastopol should be captured to ensure Russia’s acceptance of the Four Points. Palmerston agreed. He had no intention of allowing any peace initiative to hold back the military blows he planned to strike against the Russians in the spring campaigning season.⁶

The French ministers were more inclined to take the Russian offer at its face value and explore the possibilities of a negotiated settlement. Their willingness to do so was greatly strengthened during February, when Napoleon announced his firm intention – against the many warnings of his ministers and allies, who feared for his life – to go to the Crimea and take personal charge of the military operations there. Palmerston agreed with Clarendon that every effort must be made to stop the Emperor’s ‘insane’ idea, even if it meant beginning peace negotiations in Vienna. For the sake of the alliance, and to give his government the appearance of being serious about peace talks following the resignation of three senior Peelites (Gladstone, Graham and Herbert) who had doubted his sincerity after just a fortnight in office, Palmerston named Lord John Russell as Britain’s representative at the Vienna Conference.^av

The appointment of Russell, a long-time member of the war party, seemed at first to be a way for Palmerston to kill off the peace talks. But Russell soon became converted to the Austrian initiative and even came to question