There were 45,000 religious students in the medrese of the Turkish capital. They were discontented as a group – the Tanzimat reforms had reduced their status and career prospects by promoting graduates of the new secular schools – and this social grievance gave a cutting edge to their protests. The Turkish government was terrified of the possibility of an Islamic revolution if it failed to declare war against Russia.40
On 10 September, thirty-five religious leaders submitted a petition to the Grand Council, which discussed it the next day. According to the London Times:
The petition was principally composed of numerous quotations from the Koran, enjoining war on the enemies of Islam, and contained covert threats of disturbance were it not listened to and complied with. The tone of the petition is exceedingly bold, and bordering on the insolent. Some of the principal Ministers endeavoured to reason with those who presented it, but the answers they obtained were short and to the point. ‘Here are the words of the Koran: if you are Mussulmans you are bound to obey. You are now listening to foreign and infidel ambassadors who are the enemies of the Faith; we are the children of the Prophet; we have an army and that army cries out with us for war, to avenge the insults which the Giaours have heaped upon us.’ It is said that on each attempt to reason with these fanatics, the Ministers were met by the answer ‘These are the words of the Koran.’ The present Ministers are undoubtedly in a state of alarm, since they look upon the present circumstance (a very unusual event in Turkey) as but the commencement of a revolution, and fear to be forced at the present inopportune juncture into a war.
On 12 September the religious leaders gained an audience with the Sultan. They gave him an ultimatum: either declare war or abdicate. Abdülmecid turned for help to Stratford and the French ambassador, Edmond de Lacour, who both agreed to bring up their fleets if they were needed to put down a revolution in the Turkish capital.41
That evening, the Sultan called a meeting of his ministers. They agreed to declare war against Russia, although not until the Porte had time to firm up the support of the Western fleets and put down the religious protests in Constantinople. The policy was formally agreed at an enlarged session of the Grand Council on 26–7 September attended by the Sultan’s ministers, leading Muslim clerics and the military establishment. It was the religious leaders who insisted on the need to fight, despite the hesitations of the military commanders, who had their doubts about the capacity of the Turkish forces to win a war against Russia. Omer Pasha thought that 40,000 more troops would be needed on the Danube, where it would require several months to prepare the forts and bridges for a war against Russia. Mehmet Ali, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, would not say whether it was possible to win against Russia, despite his association with the ‘war party’. Nor would Mahmud Pasha, the grand admiral of the navy, who said the Turks could match the Russian fleet but would not take responsibility for these words if later called to account for a defeat. In the end, it was Reshid who came round to the viewpoint of the Muslim leaders, perhaps sensing that to oppose war at this late stage would spark a religious revolution and destroy the Tanzimat reforms, upon which the support of the Western powers in any war with Russia would depend. ‘Better to die fighting than not to fight at all,’ declared Reshid. ‘God willing, we will be victorious.’42
5
Phoney War
The Turkish declaration of war appeared in the official newspaper Takvim-i Vekayi on 4 October. It was quickly followed by a ‘Manifesto of the Sublime Porte’ stating that the government had been forced to declare war because of Russia’s refusal to evacuate the principalities but adding that, as a sign of its peaceful intentions, the commander of the Rumelian army, Omer Pasha, would give the Russian forces an extra fifteen days to carry out the evacuation before the commencement of hostilities.1
Even at this stage there were hopes for a diplomatic settlement. The Turkish declaration was a means of buying time for one to work by calming the war fever of the religious crowds in Constantinople and placing pressure on the Western governments to intervene. Unprepared for a real war against Russia, the Ottomans began a phoney one to avert the threat of an Islamic revolution in the Turkish capital and to force the West to send their fleets to make the Russians back down.
On 19 October the Turkish ultimatum expired. Against the advice of the British and the French, who tried to hold them back, the Turks went on the attack in the principalities, calculating that the Western press would drum up public support for their cause against Russia. The Turkish government was very conscious of the power of the British press in particular, perhaps even thinking that it was the same as the government, and tried very hard to win it over to its side. Throughout the autumn of 1853 the Porte directed considerable funds to its London embassy so that it could ‘pay for and organize in secret a series of public demonstrations and newspaper articles’ calling on the British government to intervene against Russia.2
Ordered by the Porte to commence hostilities, on 23 October Omer Pasha’s forces crossed the Danube at Kalafat and took the town from the Cossacks in the first skirmish of the war. The villagers of the Kalafat region – an anti-Russian stronghold of the 1848 Wallachian revolution – armed themselves with hunting guns and joined the fight against the Cossack troops. The Turks also crossed the river at Oltenitsa, where they engaged in heavier but indecisive fighting with the Russians, both sides claiming victory.3
These initial skirmishes made up the Tsar’s mind to launch a major offensive against the Turks, as he had outlined in his letter to Paskevich on 29 May. But his chief commander had become even more opposed to the idea than he had been in the spring. Paskevich thought the Turks too strong and the Western fleets too close for the Russians to attack the Turkish capital. On 24 September he had sent a memo to the Tsar, urging him to adopt a more defensive position on the northern side of the Danube, while organizing Christian militias to rise up against the Turks south of the river. His aim was to pressure the Turks into making concessions to Russia without the need to fight a war. ‘We have the most deadly weapon to use against the Ottoman Empire,’ Paskevich wrote. ‘Its success cannot even be prevented by the Western powers. Our most terrifying weapon is our influence among our Christian tribes in Turkey.’
Paskevich was mainly worried that the Austrians would oppose a Russian offensive in the Balkans, where they were vulnerable to Slav uprisings in their own neighbouring territories. He did not want to commit Russian troops to battle with the Turks if they might be needed against an attack by the Austrians, most likely in Poland, whose loss might lead to the collapse of the Russian Empire in Europe. Paskevich lacked the courage to confront the Tsar. So instead he dragged his heels, ignoring orders to advance south as soon as possible and concentrating instead on the consolidation of the Russian positions along the Danube. His aim was twofold: to turn the river into a supply line from the Black Sea into the Balkans, and to organize the Christians into militias in preparation for a future offensive against the Turks, perhaps in the spring of 1854. ‘The idea is new and beautiful,’ Paskevich wrote. ‘It will bring us into close relations with the most belligerent tribes of Turkey: the Serbs, Herzegovians, Montenegrins and Bulgarians, who, if not for us, are at least against the Turks, and who with some help from our side may indeed destroy the Turkish empire … without loss of Russian blood.’4 Aware that it went against the legitimist principles of the Tsar to stir revolts in foreign lands, Paskevich defended his idea on religious grounds – the protection of the Orthodox from Muslim persecution – and cited precedents from previous wars with Turkey (in 1773–4, 1788–91 and 1806–12) when the Russian army had raised Christian troops in Ottoman territories.5
The Tsar did not need much convincing. In a revealing memorandum written at the start of November 1853, Nicholas outlined his strategy for the war against Turkey. Circulated to his ministers and senior commanders, the memorandum was clearly influenced by Paskevich, his most trusted general. The Tsar was counting on
the Serbs to rebel against the Turks, followed sometime later by the Bulgarians. The Russian army would consolidate a defensive position on the Danube and then move further south to liberate the Christians when they rose against the Turks. The strategy depended on the long-term occupation of the principalities to give the Russians time to organize the Christians into militias. The Tsar looked ahead at least a year:
The beginning of 1855 will show us how much hope we can place on the Christians of Turkey and whether England and France will remain opposed to us. There is no other way for us to move ahead, except through a popular uprising (narodnoe vosstanie) for independence on the widest and most general scale; without this popular collaboration we cannot even think of an offensive; the fight should be between the Christians and the Turks – with us, so to speak, remaining in reserve.6
Nesselrode, the Tsar’s cautious Foreign Minister, tried to pour cold water on this revolutionary strategy, and his caution was shared by most Russian diplomats. In a memo to the Tsar on 8 November, he argued that the Balkan Slavs would not rise up in large numbers;j that inciting revolts would make Europe suspicious of Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans; and that it was a dangerous game to play in any case, for Turkey too could stir revolts by the Tsar’s Muslims in the Caucasus and the Crimea.7
But Nicholas would not be diverted from his goal of a religious war. He saw himself as the defender of the Orthodox faith and refused to be dissuaded from his mission by a Foreign Minister whose Protestant background diminished his standing on religious matters in the Tsar’s opinion. Nicholas saw it as his sacred duty to free the Slavs from Muslim rule. In all his manifestos to the Balkan Slavs he made it clear that Russia was fighting a religious war for their liberation from the Turks. On his instructions, his army commanders donated bells to churches in the Christian towns and villages they occupied as a means of winning popular support. Mosques were converted into churches by the Russian troops.8
The Tsar’s religious fervour became entangled in the broader military calculation – foremost in the more tactical thinking of Paskevich – that the Balkan Christians might provide a cheap army and plentiful resources to fight the Russian cause. By 1853, Nicholas had moved much closer to the Slavophiles and the pan-Slavs, who had a number of patrons at the court as well as the support of Barbette Nelidov, the long-term mistress of the Tsar. According to Anna Tiutcheva, the daughter of the poet Fedor Tiutchev and a lady-in-waiting at the court, the ideas of the pan-Slavs were now openly expressed by the Grand Duke Alexander, the heir to the throne, and his wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. On several occasions she heard them say in conversation that Russia’s natural allies were the Balkan Slavs, who should be supported in their fight for independence by the Russian troops once they had crossed the Danube. Countess Bludova, another pan-Slav at court, urged the Tsar to declare war on Austria as well as Turkey for the liberation of the Slavs. She passed on many of Pogodin’s letters to the Tsar in which the pan-Slav leader called on Nicholas to unite the Slavs under Russian leadership and found a Slavic Christian empire based in Constantinople.9
The Tsar’s notes in the margins of a memorandum by Pogodin reveal much about his thinking in December 1853, when he came closest to embracing the pan-Slav cause. Pogodin had been asked by Nicholas to give his thoughts on Russia’s policy towards the Slavs in the war against Turkey. His answer was a detailed survey of Russia’s relations with the European powers which was filled with grievances against the West. The memorandum clearly struck a chord with Nicholas, who shared Pogodin’s sense that Russia’s role as the protector of the Orthodox had not been recognized or understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage, in which Pogodin railed against the double standards of the Western powers, which allowed them to conquer foreign lands but forbade Russia to do the same:
France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years in peacetime:k that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese,l who have, it seems, offended them: no one has a right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet:m that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice, which does not understand and does not want to understand (comment in the margin by Nicholas I: ‘This is the whole point’).
Having stirred the Tsar’s own grievances against the West, Pogodin encouraged him to act alone, according to his conscience before God, to defend the Orthodox and promote Russia’s interests in the Balkans. Nicholas expressed his approval:
Who are our allies in Europe (comment by Nicholas: ‘No one, and we don’t need them, if we put our trust in God, unconditionally and willingly’). Our only true allies in Europe are the Slavs, our brothers in blood, language, history and faith, and there are ten million of them in Turkey and millions in Austria … The Turkish Slavs could provide us with over 200,000 troops – and what troops! And that is not counting the Croatians, Dalmatians and Slovenians, etc. (comment by Nicholas: ‘An exaggeration: reduce to one-tenth and it is true’) …
By declaring war on us, the Turks have destroyed all the old treaties defining our relations, so we can now demand the liberation of the Slavs, and bring this about by war, as they themselves have chosen war (comment by Nicholas: ‘That is right’).
If we do not liberate the Slavs and bring them under our protection, then our enemies, the English and the French … will do so instead. In Serbia, Bulgaria and Bosnia, they are active everywhere among the Slavs, with their Western parties, and if they succeed, where will we be then? (comment by Nicholas: ‘Absolutely right’).
Yes! If we fail to use this favourable opportunity, if we sacrifice the Slavs and betray their hopes, or leave their fate to be decided by other powers, then we will have ranged against us not one lunatic Poland but ten of them (which our enemies desire and are working to arrange) … (comment by Nicholas: ‘That is right’).
With the Slavs as enemies, Russia would become a ‘second-rate power’, argued Pogodin, whose final sentences were three times underlined by Nicholas:
The greatest moment in Russia’s history has arrived – greater perhaps even than the days of Poltavan and Borodino. If Russia does not advance it will fall back – that is the law of history. But can Russia really fall? Would God allow that? No! He is guiding the great Russian soul, and we see that in the glorious pages we have dedicated to Him in the History of our Fatherland. Surely He would not allow it to be said: Peter founded the dominion of Russia in the East, Catherine consolidated it, Alexander expanded it, and Nicholas betrayed it to the Latins.
No, that cannot be, and will not be. With God on our side, we cannot go back.10
To get him to embrace his pan-Slav ideology Pogodin had cleverly appealed to the Tsar’s belief in his divine mission to defend the Orthodox as well as to his growing alienation from the West. In his November memorandum to his ministers, Nicholas had declared that Russia had no option but to turn towards the Slavs, because the Western powers, and Britain in particular, had sided with the Turks against Russia’s ‘holy cause’.
We call on all the Christians to join us in the struggle for their liberation from centuries of Ottoman oppression. We declare our support for the independence of the Moldavian-Wallachians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Bosnians and Greeks … . I see no other way to bring an end to the hostility of the British, because it is unlikely that after such a declaration they would continue to ally with the Turks
and fight with them against Christians.11
Nicholas continued to have doubts about the pan-Slav cause: he did not share Pogodin’s illusions about the number of Slav troops it was possible to mobilize in the Balkans; and ideologically he remained opposed to the idea of stirring revolutionary uprisings, preferring instead to proclaim his support for the liberation of the Slavs on religious principles. But the more the West expressed its opposition to Russia’s occupation of the principalities, the more he was inclined to gamble everything on a grand alliance of the Orthodox, even threatening to support Slav revolts against the Austrians, if they should join the West against Russia. Religious conviction made the old Tsar rash and reckless, risking all the gains Russia had made in the Near East over many decades of diplomacy and fighting on a gamble with the Slavs.12
Hopeful of a Serb uprising, the Tsar favoured marching south-west from Bucharest towards Rusçuk, so that his troops would be close enough to aid the Serbs if they rose up, instead of concentrating on the Turkish fortress of Silistria, further to the east on the Danube, as preferred by Paskevich. As Nicholas explained in a letter to Paskevich, he wanted to subordinate his military strategy to the larger cause of the liberation of the Slavs, which a Serb uprising would begin:
Of course Silistria is an important point … but it seems to me that if we are to advance our cause through the Christians, and keep ourselves in reserve, it would make more sense to take Rusçuk, from which we can strike into the centre of Wallachia while remaining among the Bulgarians and close to the Serbs, on whom surely we need to depend. To advance further than Rusçuk will depend on a general uprising of the Christians, which should break out shortly after we have occupied Rusçuk; capturing Silistria, I suggest, would not have such an effect [on the Serbs], for it is far away from them.13
The Crimean War Page 17