Origin of the Crimean War-Russia and "the Sick Man"-Coercing Turkey-The Dispute about the Holy Places A Monkish Quarrel-Contradictory Concessions-The Czar and the Tory Ministry of 1844-The Secret Compact with Peel, Wellington, and Aberdeen-Nesselrode's Secret Memorandum-The Czar and Sir Hamilton Seymour-Lord John Russell's Admissions-The Czar's Bewilderment--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe-The Marplot at Constantinople-A Hectoring Russian Envoy-The Allied Fleets at Besika Bay-The Conference of Vienna-The Vienna Note-The Turkish Modifications-The Case for EnglandThe British Fleet in the Euxine - A Caustic Letter of the Queen to Lord Aberdeen-Prince Albert's Warnings-The Massacre of Sinope-Internal Feuds in the Cabinet-Lord John Russell's IntriguesPalmerston's Resignation and Return-The Fire at Windsor-Birth of Prince Leopold-The Camp at Chobham-The Czar's Daughters-Naval Review at Spithead-Royal Visit to Ireland.

WHEN Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of August, 1853, the following passage was inserted in the Queen's Speech. "It is with deep interest and concern that her Majesty has viewed the serious misunderstanding which has recently risen between Russia and the Ottoman Porte. The Emperor of the French has united with her Majesty in earnest endeavours to reconcile differences, the continuance of which might involve Europe in war." The war to which these differences led has ever been regarded by the Queen as the one heart-breaking calamity of her reign-a calamity hardly equalled by the great Mutiny, which, though it nearly wrecked her Eastern Empire, ended in establishing her authority more firmly than ever in her Asiatic dominions. No such tangible result as that followed, however, from the war into which the country was now being rapidly hurried. The results of this war-the battles, the siege operations, "the moving accidents by flood and field ”—are all well known; but its causes are to this day very imperfectly understood by Englishmen. The folly and weakness of the Aberdeen Ministry, the influence of Prince Albert, the aggressive designs of Russia, the obstinacy and brutality of the Turks, the determination of Napoleon III. to foment a disturbance from which he might emerge with the status of a Ruler who had linked the throne of a parvenu in an alliance with an ancient

1853.]

RUSSIA AND CONSTANTINOPLE.

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monarchy, the factious desire of the Tory Opposition to entangle the Coalition Ministry in Foreign troubles-to all these causes have different writers traced the Crimean war. Let us, then, examine carefully, and closely, the development of the dispute that broke the peace of Europe in connection with the attitude to it-sometimes, it must be frankly said, a wrong attitudewhich the Queen and the Court of St. James's held.

The geographical conditions of Russia, and the political state of Turkey, favoured the outbreak of war between these States. Russia has no outlet to

the sea except through the Baltic in the north, which is frozen in winter, and through the Bosphorus in the south, which is open all the year, but which is dominated by the Sultan so long as Constantinople is the capital of Turkey. Russia has, therefore, an obvious interest either in making Turkey her vassal, or in expelling the Turks from Europe, and establishing a Power at Constantinople in servitude to the Czar. It is almost a heresy to say that Russia has not aimed at seizing Constantinople herself. Yet if we are to base our judgment on authentic historical documents, and not on the heated imaginings of excited Russophobists, it is necessary to say this. The Emperor Nicholas was the most aggressive of modern Czars, and there is no reason to doubt the cynical candour with which he expressed his views on this subject to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with him early in the year.*

"You know," said the Emperor on the 14th of January, to Sir Hamilton Seymour, "the dreams and plans in which the Empress Catherine was in the habit of indulging: these were handed down to our time;

Yet it is certain that his ideas as to the reconstitution of European Turkey in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up, took the form of organising a series of autonomous States, which, like the Danubian Principalities in 1853, should be under his protection, though, perhaps, under the nominal suzerainty of the Turks-by that time banished to Asia Minor-" bag and baggage." These ideas may have been right or wrong. It is, however, just to say that they were the ideas of the Czar, and that they do not correspond with the scheme for making Constantinople the capital of Russia, which most popular English writers accuse him of cherishing.* The interest of Russia being thus revealed, let us see where her opportunity lay. It lay in the fact that the Ottomans, though they had enough bodily strength to conquer, had never enough brain-power to govern a European Empire. In this respect they differed signally from the equally savage hordes of Manchu Tartars, who overran China, and who, instead of destroying, adapted themselves to the civilisation with which they came in contact. The Christian provinces of Turkey, and the Greek Christians, under the rule of the Sultan were misgoverned, plundered, and at times tortured by the myrmidons of a barbarous and feeble autocracy. The Russian Czar, as head of a nation fanatically devoted to the Greek cult, could always find in this misgovernment and oppression apt opportunity for interfering between the Sultan and his Greek subjects. Moreover, in every act of interference the Czar of Muscovy knows that he will be supported to the death by the fervid fanaticism of the Russian people.

But the example of other Powers was not wanting in 1853 to emphasise the promptings of interest and opportunity. In 1852 the Turks determined to strike a blow at Montenegro, with which they had for centuries waged chronic warfare. The Sublime Porte sent Omar Pasha to occupy the Principality of the Black Mountain. Austria, alarmed at the prospect, despatched Count Leiningen to Constantinople, and instructed him to press for the recall of Omar. The Porte yielded to this demand, and recalled him.†

Nor was Austria the only Power that was demonstrating the ease with which Turkey might be coerced. France had a dispute pending with Turkey, as to the privileges of the Roman Catholic monks in Jerusalem-a dispute into which the French Emperor, when Prince-President in 1850, had entered with vigour, for the purpose of conciliating the French clergy. Mr. Kinglake insinuates that Napoleon III. manufactured this quarrel in order to force on

but, while I inherited immense territorial possessions, I did not inherit those visions-those intentions if you like to call them so." And again on the 22nd of February, "I will not tolerate the permanent occupation of Constantinople by the Russians; having said this, I will say that it never shall be held by the English, or French, or any other great nation." Secret Correspondence between Sir G. H. Seymour, British Chargé d'Affaires at St. Petersburg, and Her Majesty's Government. Eastern Papers, Part V. * Secret Correspondence, Eastern Papers, Part V., p 201.

+ Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, from Russian Official Sources, Vol. I., p. 115.

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THE QUESTION OF THE HOLY PLACES.

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a European war that might strengthen his position. It is but fair to say that the Emperor inherited the controversy from Louis Philippe. * As it led to the assertion of claims on the part of Russia, the rejection of which by Turkey caused the Crimean war, it may be well briefly to set forth its salient points.

In 1740 the Porte, in a treaty with France, granted to the Roman Catholic monks and clergy in Jerusalem the custody of certain places in the Holy Land, associated with the memory of Christ, and to which Greek and Latin Christians were in the habit of making pilgrimages. The Great Church of Bethlehem, the Sanctuary of the Nativity, the Tomb of the Virgin, the Stone of Anointing, and the Seven Arches of the Virgin in the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, were among the Sacred Places thus ceded. † During the Revolution, French zeal for maintaining the privileges of the Romish clergy in Syria grew cool, and the Holy Places in the custody of the Latin monks were shockingly neglected. The Greek Christians, however, not only visited these consecrated spots as pilgrims, but piously repaired them with the sanction of the Porte, thus acquiring by firmans from the Sultan the privilege of worshipping in them. The policy of the Porte seems to have been to induce Latins and Greeks to share the use of the sacred shrines. But Latins and Greeks, under the protection of France and Russia respectively, each claimed an exclusive right of control and guardianship over them. The dispute had been carried on in a desultory way till, in 1850, it was narrowed down to this point: France, on behalf of the Latin monks, contended that, in order to pass into the grotto of the Holy Manger, they should have exclusive possession of the key of the Church of Bethlehem, and of one of the keys-the other being in Greek custody-of each of the two doors of the Holy Manger; further, that the Sanctuary of the Nativity itself should be ornamented with a silver star, and the arms of France. In February, 1853, the Porte adjudicated on the rival claims in a letter addressed to the French Chargé d'Affaires, and in a firman to the Greek patriarch. The representative of France was told that the Latins were to have the keys they demanded. The Patriarch was told that Greeks, Armenians, and Latins should have keys also, and that the Latins were not to have any of the exclusive rights over the Holy Places that they claimed. When it became known that the Porte had thus spoken with "two voices," France complained that the exclusive rights demanded by her under the Treaty of 1740 were denied in the firman. Russia, on behalf of the Greeks, claimed credit for moderation in accepting the firman as a compromise,

* Consult on this subject Mr. Nas-au Senior's article in North British Quarterly Review for February, 1851, on "The State of the Continent."

+ Louis Philippe, it must be stated in justice to Napoleon III., also claimed for the Latin Church the right of repairing the dome of the Holy Sepulchre in the Latin instead of the Byzantine form, a claim which was indescribably offensive to the Greek priests.—North British Quarterly Review, February,

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and insisted on its being publicly proclaimed at Jerusalem as a charter of Greek privileges. The Porte, in deference to the opposition of France, refused to make public proclamation of the firman.* The Russian ConsulGeneral left Jerusalem in high dudgeon. "The Latins," says Mr. Walpole, on hearing the decision of the Porte, that they should be allowed to celebrate mass once a year in the Church of the Virgin, near Gethsemane, but that they should not be allowed to disturb the altar and its ornaments, declared that it was impossible to celebrate mass on a schismatic slab of marble, and before a crucifix whose feet were separated." In this quarrel of a few ignorant monks over the mummeries of their rival rituals lay the

germ of that great war in which England sacrificed the lives of 28,000 brave men, and spent £30,000,000 of sterling treasure!

The Porte endeavoured, by contradictory concessions, such as by publicly reading the firman, and by permitting the Latins to put a star over the altar of the Nativity, to please both parties-but in vain. Russia, towards the end of 1852, had moved a corps d'armée on the frontier of Moldavia. France threatened to send her fleet to Syria; and in the end of February, 1853, the Czar sent Prince Menschikoff on a special mission to Constantinople, for the purpose of enforcing the Russian demands.

The turn in affairs that placed Lord Aberdeen at the head of the Queen's Government did not tend to moderate these demands, or induce the Czar to treat the Porte with any delicacy. The Czar, in fact, was honestly convinced that his views as to the future of Turkey were, in the main, shared by Lord Aberdeen, and therefore by the British Cabinet. It was

Dip. Stud. Crimean War, Vol. I., p. 134.

Spencer Walpole's History of England, Vol. V., p. 79.