A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 48

The plans formed by the Empress Catherine in the last century for the restoration of the Greek Empire under a prince of the Russian House had long been abandoned at St. Petersburg. The later aim of Russian policy found its clearest expression in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, extorted from Sultan Mahmud in 1833 in the course of the first war against Mehemet Ali. This Treaty, if it had not been set aside by the Western Powers, would have made the Ottoman Empire a va.s.sal State under the Czar's protection. In the concert of Europe which was called into being by the second war of Mehemet Ali against the Sultan in 1840, Nicholas had considered it his interest to act with England and the German Powers in defence of the Porte against its Egyptian rival and his French ally. A policy of moderation had been imposed upon Russia by the increased watchfulness and activity now displayed by the other European States in all that related to the Ottoman Empire. Isolated aggression had become impracticable; it was necessary for Russia to seek the countenance or support of some ally before venturing on the next step in the extension of its power southwards.

[Nicholas in England, 1844.]

In 1844 Nicholas visited England. The object of his journey was to sound the Court and Government, and to lay the foundation for concerted action between Russia and England, to the exclusion of France, when circ.u.mstances should bring about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, an event which the Czar believed to be not far off. Peel was then Prime Minister; Lord Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Aberdeen had begun his political career in a diplomatic mission to the Allied Armies in 1814. His feelings towards Russia were those of a loyal friend towards an old ally; and the remembrance of the epoch of 1814, when the young Nicholas had made acquaintance with Lord Aberdeen in France, appears to have given to the Czar a peculiar sense of confidence in the goodwill of the English Minister towards himself. Nicholas spoke freely with Aberdeen, as well as with Peel and Wellington, on the impending fall of the Ottoman Empire. "We have," he said, "a sick, a dying man on our hands. We must keep him alive so long as it is possible to do so, but we must frankly take into view all contingencies. I wish for no inch of Turkish soil myself, but neither will I permit any other Power to seize an inch of it. France, which has designs upon Africa, upon the Mediterranean, and upon the East, is the only Power to be feared. An understanding between England and Russia will preserve the peace of Europe." If the Czar pursued his speculations further into detail, of which there is no evidence, he elicited no response. He was heard with caution, and his visit appears to have produced nothing more than the formal expression of a desire on the part of the British Government that the existing treaty-rights of Russia should be respected by the Porte, together with an unmeaning promise that, if unexpected events should occur in Turkey, Russia and England should enter into counsel as to the best course of action to be pursued in common. [455]

[Nicholas in 1848.]

[The Hungarian refugees, 1849.]

Nicholas, whether from policy or from a sense of kingly honour which at most times powerfully influenced him, did not avail himself of the prostration of the Continental Powers in 1848 to attack Turkey. He detested revolution, as a crime against the divinely ordered subjection of nations to their rulers, and would probably have felt himself degraded had he, in the spirit of his predecessor Catherine, turned the calamities of his brother-monarchs to his own separate advantage. It accorded better with his proud nature, possibly also with the schemes of a far-reaching policy, for Russia to enter the field as the protector of the Hapsburgs against the rebel Hungarians than for its armies to s.n.a.t.c.h from the Porte what the lapse of time and the goodwill of European allies would probably give to Russia at no distant date without a struggle. Disturbances at Bucharest and at Ja.s.sy led indeed to a Russian intervention in the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities in the interests of a despotic system of government; but Russia possessed by treaty protectorial rights over these Provinces. The military occupation which followed the revolt against the Hospodars was the subject of a convention between Turkey and Russia; it was effected by the armies of the two Powers jointly; and at the expiration of two years the Russian forces were peacefully withdrawn. More serious were the difficulties which arose from the flight of Kossuth and other Hungarian leaders into Turkey after the subjugation of Hungary by the allied Austrian and Russian armies. The Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg united in demanding from the Porte the surrender of these refugees; the Sultan refused to deliver them up, and he was energetically supported by Great Britain, Kossuth's children on their arrival at Constantinople being received and cared for at the British Emba.s.sy. The tyrannous demand of the two Emperors, the courageous resistance of the Sultan, excited the utmost interest in Western Europe. By a strange turn of fortune, the Power which at the end of the last century had demanded from the Court of Vienna the Greek leader Rhegas, and had put him to death as soon as he was handed over by the Austrian police, was now gaining the admiration of all free nations as the last barrier that sheltered the champions of European liberty from the vengeance of despotic might. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria had not reckoned with the forces of public indignation aroused against them in the West by their attempt to wrest their enemies from the Sultan's hand.

They withdrew their amba.s.sadors from Constantinople and threatened to resort to force. But the appearance of the British and French fleets at the Dardanelles gave a new aspect to the dispute. The Emperors learnt that if they made war upon Turkey for the question at issue they would have to fight also against the Western Powers. The demand for the surrender of the refugees was withdrawn; and in undertaking to keep the princ.i.p.al of them under surveillance for a reasonable period, the Sultan gave to the two Imperial Courts such satisfaction as they could, without loss of dignity, accept. [456]

[Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places, 1850-2.]

The _coup d'etat_ of Louis Napoleon at the end of the year 1851 was witnessed by the Czar with sympathy and admiration as a service to the cause of order; but the a.s.sumption of the Imperial t.i.tle by the Prince displeased him exceedingly. While not refusing to recognise Napoleon III., he declined to address him by the term (_mon frere_) usually employed by monarchs in writing to one another. In addition to the question relating to the Hungarian refugees, a dispute concerning the Holy Places in Palestine threatened to cause strife between France and Russia. The same wave of religious and theological interest which in England produced the Tractarian movement brought into the arena of political life in France an enthusiasm for the Church long strange to the Legislature and the governing circles of Paris. In the a.s.sembly of 1849 Montalembert, the spokesman of this militant Catholicism, was one of the foremost figures. Louis Napoleon, as President, sought the favour of those whom Montalembert led; and the same Government which restored the Pope to Rome demanded from the Porte a stricter enforcement of the rights of the Latin Church in the East. The earliest Christian legends had been localised in various spots around Jerusalem. These had been in the ages of faith the goal of countless pilgrimages, and in more recent centuries they had formed the object of treaties between the Porte and France. Greek monks, however, disputed with Latin monks for the guardians.h.i.+p of the Holy Places; and as the power of Russia grew, the privileges of the Greek monks had increased.

The claims of the rival brotherhoods, which related to doors, keys, stars and lamps, might probably have been settled to the satisfaction of all parties within a few hours by an experienced stage-manager; in the hands of diplomatists bent on obtaining triumphs over one another they a.s.sumed dimensions that overshadowed the peace of Europe. The French and the Russian Ministers at Constantinople alternately tormented the Sultan in the character of aggrieved sacristans, until, at the beginning of 1852, the Porte compromised itself with both parties by adjudging to each rights which it professed also to secure to the other. A year more, spent in prevarications, in excuses, and in menaces, ended with the triumph of the French, with the evasion of the promises made by the Sultan to Russia, and with the discomfiture of the Greek Church in the person of the monks who officiated at the Holy Sepulchre and the Shrine of the Nativity. [457]

[Nicholas and Sir H. Seymour, Jan., Feb., 1853.]

Nicholas treated the conduct of the Porte as an outrage upon himself. A conflict which had broken out between the Sultan and the Montenegrins, and which now threatened to take a deadly form, confirmed the Czar in his belief that the time for resolute action had arrived. At the beginning of the year 1853 he addressed himself to Hamilton Seymour, British amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg, in terms much stronger and clearer than those which he had used towards Lord Aberdeen nine years before. "The Sick Man," he said, "was in extremities; the time had come for a clear understanding between England and Russia. The occupation of Constantinople by Russian troops might be necessary, but the Czar would not hold it permanently. He would not permit any other Power to establish itself at the Bosphorus, neither would he permit the Ottoman Empire to be broken up into Republics to afford a refuge to the Mazzinis and the Kossuths of Europe. The Danubian Princ.i.p.alities were already independent States under Russian protection.

The other possessions of the Sultan north of the Balkans might be placed on the same footing. England might annex Egypt and Crete." After making this communication to the British amba.s.sador, and receiving the reply that England declined to enter into any schemes based on the fall of the Turkish Empire and disclaimed all desire for the annexation of any part of the Sultan's dominions, Nicholas despatched Prince Menschikoff to Constantinople, to demand from the Porte not only an immediate settlement of the questions relating to the Holy Places, but a Treaty guaranteeing to the Greek Church the undisturbed enjoyment of all its ancient rights and the benefit of all privileges that might be accorded by the Porte to any other Christian communities. [458]

[The Claims of Russia.]

The Treaty which Menschikoff was instructed to demand would have placed the Sultan and the Czar in the position of contracting parties with regard to the entire body of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Sultan's subjects of the Greek confession, and would so have made the violation of these rights in the case of any individual Christian a matter ent.i.tling Russia to interfere, or to claim satisfaction as for the breach of a Treaty engagement. By the Treaty of Kainardjie (1774) the Sultan had indeed bound himself "to protect the Christian religion and its Churches"; but this phrase was too indistinct to create specific matter of Treaty-obligation; and if it had given to Russia any general right of interference on behalf of members of the Greek Church, it would have given it the same right in behalf of all the Roman Catholics and all the Protestants in the Sultan's dominions, a right which the Czars had never professed to enjoy. Moreover, the Treaty of Kainardjie itself forbade by implication any such construction, for it mentioned by name one ecclesiastical building for whose priests the Porte did concede to Russia the right of addressing representations to the Sultan. Over the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities Russia possessed by the Treaty of Adrianople undoubted protectorial rights; but these Provinces stood on a footing quite different from that of the remainder of the Empire. That the Greek Church possessed by custom and by enactment privileges which it was the duty of the Sultan to respect, no one contested: the novelty of Menschikoff's claim was that the observation of these rights should be made matter of Treaty with Russia. The importance of the demand was proved by the fact that Menschikoff strictly forbade the Turkish Ministers to reveal it to the other Powers, and that Nicholas caused the English Government to be informed that the mission of his envoy had no other object than the final adjustment of the difficulties respecting the Holy Places. [459]

[Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.]

[Menschikoff leaves Constantinople, May 21.]

[Russian troops enter the Princ.i.p.alities.]

When Menschikoff reached Constantinople the British Emba.s.sy was in the hands of a subordinate officer. The Amba.s.sador, Sir Stratford Canning, had recently returned to England. Stratford Canning, a cousin of the Premier, had been employed in the East at intervals since 1810. There had been a period in his career when he had desired to see the Turk expelled from Europe as an incurable barbarian; but the reforms of Sultan Mahmud had at a later time excited his warm interest and sympathy, and as Amba.s.sador at Constantinople from 1842 to 1852 he had laboured strenuously for the regeneration of the Turkish Empire, and for the improvement of the condition of the Christian races under the Sultan's rule. His dauntless, sustained energy, his n.o.ble presence, the sincerity of his friends.h.i.+p towards the Porte, gave him an influence at Constantinople seldom, if ever, exercised by a foreign statesman. There were moments when he seemed to be achieving results of some value; but the task which he had attempted was one that surpa.s.sed human power; and after ten years so spent as to win for him the fame of the greatest amba.s.sador by whom England has been represented in modern times, he declared that the prospects of Turkish reform were hopeless, and left Constantinople, not intending to return.

[460] Before his successor had been appointed, the mission of Prince Menschikoff, the violence of his behaviour at Constantinople, and a rumour that he sought far more than his ostensible object, alarmed the British Government. Canning was asked to resume his post. Returning to Constantinople as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he communicated on his journey with the Courts of Paris and Vienna, and carried with him authority to order the Admiral of the fleet at Malta to hold his s.h.i.+ps in readiness to sail for the East. He arrived at the Bosphorus on April 5th, learnt at once the real situation of affairs, and entered into negotiation with Menschikoff. The Russian, a mere child in diplomacy in comparison with his rival, suffered himself to be persuaded to separate the question of the Holy Places from that of the guarantee of the rights of the Greek Church.

In the first matter Russia had a good cause; in the second it was advancing a new claim. The two being dissociated, Stratford had no difficulty in negotiating a compromise on the Holy Places satisfactory to the Czar's representative; and the demand for the Protectorate over the Greek Christians now stood out un.o.bscured by those grievances of detail with which it had been at first interwoven. Stratford encouraged the Turkish Government to reject the Russian proposal. Knowing, nevertheless, that Menschikoff would in the last resort endeavour to intimidate the Sultan personally, he withheld from the Ministers, in view of this last peril, the strongest of all his arguments; and seeking a private audience with the Sultan on the 9th of May, he made known to him with great solemnity the authority which he had received to order the fleet at Malta to be in readiness to sail. The Sultan placed the natural interpretation on this statement, and ordered final rejection of Menschikoff's demand, though the Russian had consented to a modification of its form, and would now have accepted a note declaratory of the intentions of the Sultan towards the Greek Church instead of a regular Treaty. On the 21st of May Menschikoff quitted Constantinople; and the Czar, declaring that some guarantee must be held by Russia for the maintenance of the rights of the Greek Christians, announced that he should order his army to occupy the Danubian Provinces.

After an interval of some weeks the Russian troops crossed the Pruth, and spread themselves over Moldavia and Wallachia. (June 22nd.) [461]

[English Policy.]

In the ordinary course of affairs the invasion of the territory of one Empire by the troops of another is, and can be nothing else than, an act of war, necessitating hostilities as a measure of defence on the part of the Power invaded. But the Czar protested that in taking the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities in pledge he had no intention of violating the peace; and as yet the common sense of the Turks, as well as the counsels that they received from without, bade them hesitate before issuing a declaration of war. Since December, 1852, Lord Aberdeen had been Prime Minister of England, at the head of a Cabinet formed by a coalition between followers of Sir Robert Peel and the Whig leaders Palmerston and Russell. [462] There was no man in England more pacific in disposition, or more anxious to remain on terms of honourable friends.h.i.+p with Russia, than Lord Aberdeen.

The Czar had justly reckoned on the Premier's own forbearance; but he had failed to recognise the strength of those forces which, both within and without the Cabinet, set in the direction of armed resistance to Russia.

Palmerston was keen for action. Lord Stratford appears to have taken it for granted from the first that, if a war should arise between the Sultan and the Czar in consequence of the rejection of Menschikoff's demand, Great Britain would fight in defence of the Ottoman Empire. He had not stated this in express terms, but the communication which he made to the Sultan regarding his own instructions could only have been intended to convey this impression. If the fleet was not to defend the Sultan, it was a mere piece of deceit to inform him that the Amba.s.sador had powers to place it in readiness to sail; and such deceit was as alien to the character of Lord Stratford as the a.s.sumption of a virtual engagement towards the Sultan was in keeping with his imperious will and his pa.s.sionate conviction of the duty of England. From the date of Lord Stratford's visit to the Palace, although no Treaty or agreement was in existence, England stood bound in honour, so long as the Turks should pursue the policy laid down by her envoy, to fulfil the expectations which this envoy had held out.

[British and French fleets moved to Besika Bay, July, 1853.]

[The Vienna Note, July 28.]

[Constantinople in September.]

[British and French fleets pa.s.s the Dardanelles, Oct. 22.]

Had Lord Stratford been at the head of the Government, the policy and intentions of Great Britain would no doubt have been announced with such distinctness that the Czar could have fostered no misapprehension as to the results of his own acts. Palmerston, as Premier, would probably have adopted the same clear course, and war would either have been avoided by this nation or have been made with a distinct purpose and on a definite issue. But the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen was at variance with itself.

Aberdeen was ready to go to all lengths in negotiation, but he was not sufficiently master of his colleagues and of the representatives of England abroad to prevent acts and declarations which in themselves brought war near; above all, he failed to require from Turkey that abstention from hostilities on which, so long as negotiations lasted, England and the other Powers which proposed to make the cause of the Porte their own ought unquestionably to have insisted. On the announcement by the Czar that his army was about to enter the Princ.i.p.alities, the British Government despatched the fleet to Besika Bay near the entrance to the Dardanelles, and authorised Stratford to call it to the Bosphorus, in case Constantinople should be attacked. [463] The French fleet, which had come into Greek waters on Menschikoff's appearance at Constantinople, took up the same position. Meanwhile European diplomacy was busily engaged in framing schemes of compromise between the Porte and Russia. The representatives of the four Powers met at Vienna, and agreed upon a note which, as they considered, would satisfy any legitimate claims of Russia on behalf of the Greek Church, and at the same time impose upon the Sultan no further obligations towards Russia than those which already existed. [464]

This note, however, was ill drawn, and would have opened the door to new claims on the part of Russia to a general Protectorate not sanctioned by its authors. The draft was sent to St. Petersburg, and was accepted by the Czar. At Constantinople its ambiguities were at once recognised; and though Lord Stratford in his official capacity urged its acceptance under a European guarantee against misconstruction, the Divan, now under the pressure of strong patriotic forces, refused to accept the note unless certain changes were made in its expressions. France, England, and Austria united in recommending to the Court of St. Petersburg the adoption of these amendments. The Czar, however, declined to admit them, and a Russian doc.u.ment, which obtained a publicity for which it was not intended, proved that the construction of the note which the amendments were expressly designed to exclude was precisely that which Russia meant to place upon it.

The British Ministry now refused to recommend the note any longer to the Porte. [465] Austria, while it approved of the amendments, did not consider that their rejection by the Czar justified England in abandoning the note as the common award of the European Powers; and thus the concert of Europe was interrupted, England and France combining in a policy which Austria and Prussia were not willing to follow. In proportion as the chances of joint European action diminished, the ardour of the Turks themselves, and of those who were to be their allies, rose higher. Tumults, organised by the heads of the war-party, broke out at Constantinople; and although Stratford scorned the alarms of his French colleagues, who reported that a ma.s.sacre of the Europeans in the capital was imminent, he thought it necessary to call up two vessels of war in order to provide for the security of the English residents and of the Sultan himself. In England Palmerston and the men of action in the Cabinet dragged Lord Aberdeen with them. The French Government pressed for vigorous measures, and in conformity with its desire instructions were sent from London to Lord Stratford to call the fleet to the Bosphorus, and to employ it in defending the territory of the Sultan against aggression. On the 22nd of October the British and French fleets pa.s.sed the Dardanelles.

[The ultimatum of Omar Pasha rejected, Oct. 10.]

[Turkish squadron destroyed at Sinope, Nov. 30.]

The Turk, sure of the protection of the Western Powers, had for some weeks resolved upon war; and yet the possibilities of a diplomatic settlement were not yet exhausted. Stratford himself had forwarded to Vienna the draft of an independent note which the Sultan was prepared to accept. This had not yet been seen at St. Petersburg. Other projects of conciliation filled the desks of all the leading politicians of Europe. Yet, though the belief generally existed that some scheme could be framed by which the Sultan, without sacrifice of his dignity and interest, might induce the Czar to evacuate the Princ.i.p.alities, no serious attempt was made to prevent the Turks from coming into collision with their enemies both by land and sea.

The commander of the Russian troops in the Princ.i.p.alities having, on the 10th of October, rejected an ultimatum requiring him to withdraw within fifteen days, this answer was taken as the signal for the commencement of hostilities. The Czar met the declaration of war with a statement that he would abstain from taking the offensive, and would continue merely to hold the Princ.i.p.alities as a material guarantee. Omar Pasha, the Ottoman commander in Bulgaria, was not permitted to observe the same pa.s.sive att.i.tude. Crossing the Danube, he attacked and defeated the Russians at Oltenitza. Thus a.s.sailed, the Czar considered that his engagement not to act on the offensive was at an end, and the Russian fleet, issuing from Sebastopol, attacked and destroyed a Turkish squadron in the harbour of Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea (November 30). The action was a piece of gross folly on the part of the Russian authorities if they still cherished the hopes of pacification which the Czar professed; but others also were at fault. Lord Stratford and the British Admiral, if they could not prevent the Turkish s.h.i.+ps from remaining in the Euxine, where they were useless against the superior force of Russia, might at least in exercise of the powers given to them have sent a sufficient escort to prevent an encounter. But the same ill-fortune and incompleteness that had marked all the diplomacy of the previous months attended the counsels of the Admirals at the Bosphorus; and the disaster of Sinope rendered war between the Western Powers and Russia almost inevitable. [466]

[Effect of the action at Sinope.]

[Russian s.h.i.+ps required to enter port, December.]

[England and France declare war, March 27, 1854.]

The Turks themselves had certainly not understood the declaration of the Emperor Nicholas as a.s.suring their squadron at Sinope against attack; and so far was the Ottoman Admiral from being the victim of a surprise that he had warned his Government some days before of the probability of his own destruction. But to the English people, indignant with Russia since its destruction of Hungarian liberty and its tyrannous demand for the surrender of the Hungarian refugees, all that now pa.s.sed heaped up the intolerable sum of autocratic violence and deceit. The cannonade which was continued against the Turkish crews at Sinope long after they had become defenceless gave to the battle the aspect of a ma.s.sacre; the supposed promise of the Czar to act only on the defensive caused it to be denounced as an act of flagrant treachery; the circ.u.mstance that the Turkish fleet was lying within one of the Sultan's harbours, touching as it were the territory which the navy of England had undertaken to protect, imparted to the attack the character of a direct challenge and defiance to England. The cry rose loud for war. Napoleon, eager for the alliance with England, eager in conjunction with England to play a great part before Europe, even at the cost of a war from which France had nothing to gain, proposed that the combined fleets should pa.s.s the Bosphorus and require every Russian vessel sailing on the Black Sea to re-enter port. His proposal was adopted by the British Government. Nicholas learnt that the Russian flag was swept from the Euxine. It was in vain that a note upon which the representatives of the Powers at Vienna had once more agreed was accepted by the Porte and forwarded to St. Petersburg (December 31). The pride of the Czar was wounded beyond endurance, and at the beginning of February he recalled his amba.s.sadors from London and Paris. A letter written to him by Napoleon III., demanding in the name of himself and the Queen of England the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities, was answered by a reference to the campaign of Moscow, Austria now informed the Western Powers that if they would fix a delay for the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities, the expiration of which should be the signal for hostilities, it would support the summons; and without waiting to learn whether Austria would also unite with them in hostilities in the event of the summons being rejected, the British and French Governments despatched their ultimatum to St. Petersburg.

Austria and Prussia sought, but in vain, to reconcile the Court of St.

Petersburg to the only measure by which peace could now be preserved. The ultimatum remained without an answer, and on the 27th of March England and France declared war.

[Policy of Austria.]

The Czar had at one time believed that in his Eastern schemes he was sure of the support of Austria; and he had strong reasons for supposing himself ent.i.tled to its aid. But his mode of thought was simpler than that of the Court of Vienna. Schwarzenberg, when it was remarked that the intervention of Russia in Hungary would bind the House of Hapsburg too closely to its protector, had made the memorable answer, "We will astonish the world by our ingrat.i.tude." It is possible that an instance of Austrian grat.i.tude would have astonished the world most of all; but Schwarzenberg's successors were not the men to sacrifice a sound principle to romance. Two courses of Eastern policy have, under various modifications, had their advocates in rival schools of statesmen at Vienna. The one is that of expansion southward in concert with Russia; the other is that of resistance to the extension of Russian power, and the consequent maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. During Metternich's long rule, inspired as this was by a faith in the Treaties and the inst.i.tutions of 1815, and by the dread of every living, disturbing force, the second of these systems had been consistently followed. In 1854 the determining motive of the Court of Vienna was not a decided political conviction, but the certainty that if it united with Russia it would be brought into war with the Western Powers.

Had Russia and Turkey been likely to remain alone in the arena, an arrangement for territorial compensation would possibly, as on some other occasions, have won for the Czar an Austrian alliance. Combination against Turkey was, however, at the present time, too perilous an enterprise for the Austrian monarchy; and, as nothing was to be gained through the war, it remained for the Viennese diplomatists to see that nothing was lost and as little as possible wasted. The presence of Russian troops in the Princ.i.p.alities, where they controlled the Danube in its course between the Hungarian frontier and the Black Sea, was, in default of some definite understanding, a danger to Austria; and Count Buol, the Minister at Vienna, had therefore every reason to thank the Western Powers for insisting on the evacuation of this district. When France and England were burning to take up arms, it would have been a piece of superfluous brutality towards the Czar for Austria to attach to its own demand for the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities the threat of war. But this evacuation Austria was determined to enforce. It refused, as did Prussia, to give to the Czar the a.s.surance of its neutrality; and, inasmuch as the free navigation of the Danube as far as the Black Sea had now become recognised as one of the commercial interests of Germany at large, Prussia and the German Federation undertook to protect the territory of Austria, if, in taking the measures necessary to free the Princ.i.p.alities, it should itself be attacked by Russia. [467]

[Prussia.]

The King of Prussia, clouded as his mind was by political and religious phantasms, had nevertheless at times a larger range of view than his neighbours; and his opinion as to the true solution of the difficulties between Nicholas and the Porte, at the time of Menschikoff's mission, deserved more attention than it received. Frederick William proposed that the rights of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should be placed by Treaty under the guarantee of all the Great Powers. This project was opposed by Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers as an encroachment on the Sultan's sovereignty, and its rejection led the King to write with some asperity to his amba.s.sador in London that he should seek the welfare of Prussia in absolute neutrality. [468] At a later period the King demanded from England, as the condition of any a.s.sistance from himself, a guarantee for the maintenance of the frontiers of Germany and Prussia. He regarded Napoleon III. as the representative of a revolutionary system, and believed that under him French armies would soon endeavour to overthrow the order of Europe established in 1815. That England should enter into a close alliance with this man excited the King's astonishment and disgust; and unless the Cabinet of London were prepared to give a guarantee against any future attack on Germany by the French Emperor, who was believed to be ready for every political adventure, it was vain for England to seek Prussia's aid.

Lord Aberdeen could give no such guarantee; still less could he gratify the King's strangely pa.s.sionate demand for the restoration of his authority in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel, which before 1848 had belonged in name to the Hohenzollerns. Many influences were brought to bear upon the King from the side both of England and of Russia. The English Court and Ministers, strenuously supported by Bunsen, the Prussian amba.s.sador, strove to enlist the King in an active concert of Europe against Russia by dwelling on the duties of Prussia as a Great Power and the dangers arising to it from isolation. On the other hand, the admiration felt by Frederick William for the Emperor Nicholas, and the old habitual friends.h.i.+p between Prussia and Russia, gave strength to the Czar's advocates at Berlin. Schemes for a reconstruction of Europe, which were devised by Napoleon, and supposed to receive some countenance from Palmerston, reached the King's ear. [469] He heard that Austria was to be offered the Danubian Provinces upon condition of giving up northern Italy; that Piedmont was to receive Lombardy, and in return to surrender Savoy to France; that, if Austria should decline to unite actively with the Western Powers, revolutionary movements were to be stirred up in Italy and in Hungary. Such reports kindled the King's rage.

"Be under no illusion," he wrote to his amba.s.sador; "tell the British Ministers in their private ear and on the housetops that I will not suffer Austria to be attacked by the revolution without drawing the sword in its defence. If England and France let loose revolution as their ally, be it where it may, I unite with Russia for life and death." Bunsen advocated the partic.i.p.ation of Prussia in the European concert with more earnestness than success. While the King was declaiming against the lawlessness which was supposed to have spread from the Tuileries to Downing Street, Bunsen, on his own authority, sent to Berlin a project for the annexation of Russian territory by Prussia as a reward for its alliance with the Western Courts.

This doc.u.ment fell into the hands of the Russian party at Berlin, and it roused the King's own indignation. Bitter reproaches were launched against the authors of so felonious a scheme. Bunsen could no longer retain his office. Other advocates of the Western alliance were dismissed from their places, and the policy of neutrality carried the day at Berlin.

[Relation of the Western Powers to the European Concert.]

The situation of the European Powers in April, 1854, was thus a very strange one. All the Four Powers were agreed in demanding the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities by Russia, and in the resolution to enforce this, if necessary, by arms. Protocols witnessing this agreement were signed on the 9th of April and the 23rd of May, [470] and it was moreover declared that the Four Powers recognised the necessity of maintaining the independence and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But France and England, while they made the presence of the Russians in the Princ.i.p.alities the avowed cause of war, had in reality other intentions than the mere expulsion of the intruder and the restoration of the state of things previously existing. It was their desire so to cripple Russia that it should not again be in a condition to menace the Ottoman Empire. This intention made it impossible for the British Cabinet to name, as the basis of a European league, that single definite object for which, and for which alone, all the Powers were in May, 1854, ready to unite in arms. England, the nation and the Government alike, chose rather to devote itself, in company with France, to the task of indefinitely weakening Russia than, in company with all Europe, to force Russia to one humiliating but inevitable act of submission.

Whether in the prosecution of their ulterior objects the Western Courts might or might not receive some armed a.s.sistance from Austria and Prussia no man could yet predict with confidence. That Austria would to some extent make common cause with the Allies seemed not unlikely; that Prussia would do so there was no real ground to believe; on the contrary, fair warning had been given that there were contingencies in which Prussia might ultimately be found on the side of the Czar. Striving to the utmost to discover some principle, some object, or even some formula which might expand the purely defensive basis accepted by Austria and Prussia into a common policy of reconstructive action, the Western Powers could obtain nothing more definite from the Conference at Vienna than the following shadowy engagement:--"The Four Governments engage to endeavour in common to discover the guarantees most likely to attach the existence of the Ottoman Empire to the general equilibrium of Europe. They are ready to deliberate as to the employment of means calculated to accomplish the object of their agreement." This readiness to deliberate, so cautiously professed, was a quality in which during the two succeeding years the Courts of Vienna and Berlin were not found wanting; but the war in which England and France now engaged was one which they had undertaken at their own risk, and they discovered little anxiety on any side to share their labour.

[Siege of Silistria, May.]

[The Princ.i.p.alities evacuated, June.]

During the winter of 1853 and the first weeks of the following year hostilities of an indecisive character continued between the Turks and the Russians on the Danube. At the outbreak of the war Nicholas had consulted the veteran Paskiewitsch as to the best road by which to march on Constantinople. Paskiewitsch, as a strategist, knew the danger to which a Russian force crossing the Danube would be exposed from the presence of Austrian armies on its flank; as commander in the invasion of Hungary in 1849 he had encountered, as he believed, ill faith and base dealing on the part of his ally, and had repaid it with insult and scorn; he had learnt better than any other man the military and the moral weakness of the Austrian Empire in its eastern part. His answer to the Czar's inquiries was, "The road to Constantinople lies through Vienna." But whatever bitterness the Czar might have felt at the ingrat.i.tude of Francis Joseph, he was not ready for a war with Austria, in which he could hardly have avoided the a.s.sistance of revolutionary allies; moreover, if the road to Constantinople lay through Vienna, it might be urged that the road to Vienna lay through Berlin. The simpler plan was adopted of a march on the Balkans by way of Shumla, to which the capture of Silistria was to be the prelude. At the end of March the Russian vanguard pa.s.sed the Danube at the lowest point where a crossing could be made, and advanced into the Dobrudscha. In May the siege of Silistria was undertaken by Paskiewitsch himself. But the enterprise began too late, and the strength employed both in the siege and in the field operations farther east was insufficient. The Turkish garrison, schooled by a German engineer and animated by two young English officers, maintained a stubborn and effective resistance. French and English troops had already landed at Gallipoli for the defence of Constantinople, and finding no enemy within range had taken s.h.i.+p for Varna on the north of the Balkans. Austria, on the 3rd of June, delivered its summons requiring the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities. Almost at the same time Paskiewitsch received a wound that disabled him, and was forced to surrender his command into other hands. During the succeeding fortnight the besiegers of Silistria were repeatedly driven back, and on the 22nd they were compelled to raise the siege. The Russians, now hard pressed by an enemy whom they had despised, withdrew to the north of the Danube. The retreating movement was continued during the succeeding weeks, until the evacuation of the Princ.i.p.alities was complete, and the last Russian soldier had recrossed the Pruth. As the invader retired, Austria sent its troops into these provinces, pledging itself by a convention with the Porte to protect them until peace should be concluded, and then to restore them to the Sultan.

[Further objects of the Western Powers.]