At this stage the Queen agreed with Aberdeen that the invasion of the principalities should not be taken as a cause of war against Russia. Like him, she was still inclined to trust the Tsar, whom she had met and come to like ten years before, and thought that his aggressive actions might be curbed. Her private views were anti-Turk, which also had a bearing on her attitude to the Russian invasion. Before Sinope, Victoria had written in her journal that it ‘would be in the interest of peace, and a great advantage generally, were the Turks to be well beaten’. Afterwards she took a different view of the invasion, hoping that a Russian beating of the Turks would make both sides more amenable to European peace initiatives. ‘A decided victory of the Russians by land, may, and I trust will have a pacifying effect by rendering the Emperor magnanimous and the Turks amenable to reason,’ she noted in her journal on 15 December.29
Standing up to the Turkish war mood was one thing; it was quite another to resist the war cries of the British press, especially when Palmerston, who had resigned from the cabinet on 14 December, ostensibly over parliamentary reform, was adding his own voice to the chorus of demands for military action – his aim being to challenge the peace-loving Aberdeen from outside the government by rallying public opinion behind his own campaign for a more aggressive foreign policy. Palmerston maintained that the action at Sinope was an indirect attack upon the Western powers, which had sent their warships into the Bosporus as a warning to Russia. ‘The sultan’s squadron was destroyed in a Turkish harbour where the English and French fleets, if they had been present, would have protected it,’ he explained to Seymour. Sinope was proof of Russian aggression – it was the moral pretext Britain needed (and Palmerston had been looking for) to destroy the Russian menace in the East – and continuing with the peace talks in Vienna would only make it harder for the Western powers to fight this ‘just and necessary war’. In the cabinet, Palmerston was supported by Russell, the Leader of the Commons, and crucially by Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, who swung round to Palmerston’s position when he sensed the public reaction to the destruction of the Turkish fleet (the Queen noted in her journal on 15 December that he had become ‘more warlike than he was, from fear of the newspapers’). ‘You think I care too much for public opinion,’ he wrote to Aberdeen on 18 December, ‘but really when the frightful carnage at Sinope comes to be known we shall be utterly disgraced if upon the mere score of humanity we don’t take active measures to prevent any more such outrages.’30
With Palmerston out of the cabinet, it fell to Clarendon to make the running for the war party. Sinope had demonstrated that the Russians had ‘no real intention of making peace even if the Turks propose reasonable terms’, Clarendon told Aberdeen, so there was no point in talking to them any more. He urged the Prime Minister to use Sinope as a ‘moral argument’ to reject the Austrian peace initiative and take strong measures against Russia. Determined to undermine the peace negotiations, he told Stratford to instruct the Turks to toughen their position, and warned Buol that Austria was too soft on Russia. It was too late for talks, he told Lord Cowley, the British ambassador in Paris; the time had come for the Western powers to ‘finish up Russia as a naval power in the East’.31
French support was crucial to Palmerston and the war party in the British cabinet. Napoleon was determined to use Sinope as a pretext to take strong action against Russia, partly from the calculation that it was an opportunity to cement an alliance with Britain, and partly from the belief that an emperor of France should not tolerate the humiliation of his fleet, should the Russian action go unpunished. On 19 December Napoleon proposed that the French and British fleets should enter the Black Sea and force all Russian warships to return to Sevastopol. He even threatened that the French would act alone, if Britain refused. This was enough to make Aberdeen reluctantly capitulate: fear of a resurgent France, if not fear of Russia, had forced his hand. On 22 December it was agreed that a combined fleet would protect Turkish shipping in the Black Sea. Palmerston returned to the cabinet, the undisputed leader of the war party, on Christmas Eve.32
But the origins of the Crimean War cannot be understood by studying only the motives of statesmen and diplomats. This was a war – the first war in history – to be brought about by the pressure of the press and by public opinion. With the development of the railways enabling the emergence of a national press in the 1840s and 1850s, public opinion became a potent force in British politics, arguably overshadowing the influence of Parliament and the cabinet itself. The Times, the country’s leading newspaper, had long been closely associated with the Conservative Party; but increasingly it acted and perceived itself as nothing less than a national institution, a ‘Fourth Estate’, in the words of Henry Reeve, its chief for foreign affairs, who wrote of his profession in 1855: ‘Journalism is not the instrument by which the various divisions of the ruling class express themselves: it is rather the instrument by means of which the aggregate intelligence of the nation criticizes and controls them all. It is indeed the “Fourth Estate” of the Realm: not merely the written counterpart and voice of the speaking Third.’ The government had little choice but to recognize this new reality. ‘An English Minister must please the newspapers,’ lamented Aberdeen, a Conservative of the old school who moved between the palace and his Pall Mall club. ‘The newspapers are always bawling for interference. They are bullies, and they make the Government a bully.’33
Palmerston
Palmerston was the first really modern politician in this sense. He understood the need to cultivate the press and appeal in simple terms to the public in order to create a mass-based political constituency. The issue that allowed him to achieve this was the war against Russia. His foreign policy captured the imagination of the British public as the embodiment of their own national character and popular ideals: it was Protestant and freedom-loving, energetic and adventurous, confident and bold, belligerent in its defence of the little man, proudly British, and contemptuous of foreigners, particularly those of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox religion, whom Palmerston associated with the worst vices and excesses of the Continent. The public loved his verbal commitment to liberal interventionism abroad: it reinforced their John Bull view that Britain was the greatest country in the world and that the task of government should be to export its way of life to those less fortunate who lived beyond its shores.
Palmerston became so popular, and his foreign policy became so closely linked to the defence of ‘British values’ in the public mind, that anyone who tried to halt the drift to war was likely to be vilified by the patriotic press. That was the fate of the pacifists, the radical free-traders Richard Cobden and John Bright, whose refusal to see Russia as a threat to British interests (which in their view were better served by trading with Russia) led to the press denouncing them as ‘pro-Russian’ and therefore ‘un-English’. Even Prince Albert, whose Continental habits were disliked, found himself attacked as a German or Russian (many people seemed incapable of distinguishing between the two). He was accused of treason by the press, notably by the Morning Advertiser (the ‘red top’ of its day), after it was rumoured that a court intrigue had been responsible for the resignation of Palmerston in December. When Palmerston returned to office it was widely reported by the more scurrilous end of the press that Albert had been sent as a traitor to the Tower of London, and crowds assembled there to catch a glimpse of the imprisoned Prince. The Morning Advertiser even called for his execution, adding for good measure: ‘Better that a few drops of guilty blood should be shed on a scaffold on Tower Hill than that a country should be baulked of its desire for war!’ Queen Victoria was so outraged that she threatened to abdicate. Aberdeen and Russell talked to the editors of all the major papers on the Queen’s behalf, but the answer they received held out little hope of an end to the campaign: the editors themselves had approved the stories, and in some cases had even written them, because they sold newspapers.34
In the popular imagination the struggle against Russia involved ‘British
principles’ – the defence of liberty, civilization and free trade. The protection of Turkey against Russia was associated with the gallant British virtue of championing the helpless and the weak against tyrants and bullies. Hatred of the Russians turned the Turks into paragons of virtue in the public estimation – a romantic view that had its origins in 1849 when the Turks had given refuge to the Hungarian and Polish freedom-fighters against tsarist oppression. When an Association for the Protection of Turkey and Other Countries from Partition was established by the Turcophile Urquhart at the start of 1854 it was quickly joined by several thousand radicals.
The issue of defending the Muslim Turks against the Christian Russians represented a major obstacle for Anglican Conservatives like Aberdeen and Gladstone and indeed the Queen, whose religious sympathies made her hostile to the Turks (privately, she wanted the establishment of a ‘Greek empire’ to replace the Ottomans in Europe and hoped the Turks in time ‘would all become Christians’).35 The obstacle was brushed aside by Evangelical radicals who pointed to the Tanzimat reforms as evidence of Turkish liberalism and religious tolerance. Some Church leaders even argued that the Turks had contributed to the spread of Protestantism in the Near East – an idea largely based on the missionary work of the Protestants in the Ottoman Empire. Forbidden by the Porte to convert Muslims, Anglican missionaries had concentrated instead on the Orthodox and Catholics, and every convert came with tales of the evil conduct of their priests. The issue was addressed by Lord Shaftesbury in a debate in the House of Lords on the Ottoman suppression of the Greek revolts in Thessaly and Epirus. In a speech inspired by Evangelical missionary zeal, Shaftesbury argued that the Balkan Christians were as much the victims of the Greek Orthodox priesthood and their Russian backers as they were of the Turkish authorities. From the viewpoint of converting Christians to the Protestant religion, Shaftesbury concluded, Turkish rule was preferable to the increased influence of the Tsar, who did not even allow the circulation of the Bible in Russian in his own lands.p Should the Russians conquer the Balkans, the same darkness would descend and all hopes for the Protestant religion would be lost in the region. The Porte, by contrast, Shaftesbury maintained, was not hostile to the missionary work of the Anglicans: it had intervened to protect Protestant converts from persecution by other Christians, and had even granted millet status to the Protestant religion in 1850 (he failed to mention that converts from Islam were put to death under Ottoman law). Like many Anglicans, Shaftesbury drew a sympathetic picture of Islam, whose quiet rituals seemed more in keeping with their own forms of contemplative prayer than the loud and semi-pagan rituals of the Orthodox. Such ideas were commonplace in the Evangelical community. At a public meeting to discuss the Russo-Turkish conflict in December, for example, one speaker insisted that ‘The Turk was not infidel. He was Unitarian.’ ‘As to the Russian Greeks or Greek Christians,’ it was reported by the Newcastle Guardian, ‘he said nothing against their creed, but they were a besotted, dancing, fiddling race. He spoke from personal observation.’36
The mere mention of the Sultan’s name was enough to evoke tumultuous applause. At one meeting in a theatre in Chester, for example, two thousand people passed by acclamation a resolution calling on the government to assist the Sultan ‘by the strongest warlike measures’, on the grounds that
there is no sovereign in Europe who has higher claims than the Sultan to the support of this country: no sovereign who has done more for religious toleration; for he has established religious equality in his dominions. It would be no dishonour to Englishmen if they were to rank him with the Alfreds and Edwards; and if properly supported at the present crisis by the nations of West Europe, he will make his dominions happy and prosperous and establish commercial relations of mutual advantage between them and Great Britain.
When The Times suggested that the Balkan Christians might prefer the protection of the Tsar to the continued rule of the Sultan, it was rounded on with vehement nationalistic overtones by the Morning Herald and the Morning Advertiser, which accused it of being un-English: ‘It is printed in the English language, but that is the only thing English about it. It is, where Russia is concerned, Russian all over.’37
In France, too, the press was an active influence on Napoleon’s foreign policy. The greatest pressure came from the Catholic provincial press, which had been calling for war against Russia since the beginning of the Holy Lands dispute. Their calls became ever louder after the news of Sinope. ‘A war with Russia is regrettable but necessary and unavoidable,’ argued an editorial in the Union franc-comtoise on 1 January 1854, because ‘if France and Britain fail to stop the Russian menace in Turkey, they too will be enslaved to the Russians like the Turks’.
The leitmotif of this anti-Russian propaganda was ‘the crusade of civilization against barbarism’ – a theme that also dominates the Russophobic best-seller of 1854, Gustave Doré’s Histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la Sainte Russie. The main idea of Doré’s prototype cartoon – that Russia’s barbarism was the source of her aggression – was a commonplace of the pro-war lobby on both sides of the Channel. In Britain, it was used to counteract the argument of Cobden and Bright that Russia was too backward to invade England: a campaign of publicity was launched to document the case that because Russia was so backward it needed to increase its resources through territorial expansion. In France the argument had stronger cultural overtones, inviting comparison between the Russians and the Huns. ‘The Emperor Nicholas is rather like Attila,’ claimed an editorial in the newspaper the Impartial in late January 1854.
To pretend otherwise is to overturn all notions of order and justice. Falsity in politics and falsity in religion – that is what Russia represents. Its barbarity, which tries to ape our civilization, inspires our mistrust; its despotism fills us with horror … Its despotism is suitable perhaps for a population that crawls on the boundary of animality like a herd of fanatical beasts; but it is not suitable for a civilized people … . The policies of Nicholas have raised a storm of indignation in all the civilized states of Europe; these are the policies of rape and pillage; they are brigandage on a vast scale.38
For the Ultramontane press, the greatest threat to Western civilization was Russia’s religion. If the westward march of the Tsar’s armies was not stopped, it was argued, Christendom would be taken over by the Orthodox and a new age of religious persecution would enslave the Catholics. ‘If we allow the Russians to take over Turkey,’ wrote the editor of the Union franc-comtoise, ‘we will soon see the Greek heresy imposed by Cossack arms on all of us; Europe will lose not just its liberty but its religion … We will be forced to watch our children become educated in the Greek schism and the Catholic religion will perish in the frozen deserts of Siberia where those who raise their voices to defend it will be sent.’ Echoing the words of the Cardinal of Paris, the Spectateur de Dijon called on the Catholics of France to fight a ‘holy war’ against the Russians and the Greeks in defence of their religious heritage:
Russia represents a special menace to all Catholics and none of us should misunderstand it. The Emperor Nicholas talks of privileges for the Greeks at the Holy Sepulchre, privileges bought with Russian blood. Centuries will pass before the Russians shed a fraction of the blood that the French spilled in the crusades for the Holy Places … We have a heritage to conserve there, an interest to defend. But that is not all. We are directly threatened by the proselytism of the Greek-Russian Church. We know that in St Petersburg they harbour dreams of imposing a religious autocracy on the West. They hope to convert us to their heresy by the limitless expansion of their military power. If Russia is installed in the Bosporus, it will conquer Rome as quickly as Marseilles. A swift attack would be enough to remove the Pope and cardinals before anyone could intervene.
For the Catholic provincial press, this holy war would also be a chance to reinforce religious discipline at home – to counteract the Revolution’s secularizing influence and restore the Church to the centre of national life. Fr
enchmen who had been divided by the barricades in 1848 would now be reunited through the defence of their faith.39
Napoleon seized on this idea. No doubt he imagined that a glorious war would reconcile the nation to the repressive army of his coup d’état. But his enthusiasm was never really shared by the French people, who remained on the whole indifferent to the Holy Lands dispute and the Eastern Question, even after news had reached them of the battle of Sinope. It was Napoleon who talked of following the ‘path of honour’ and fighting against Russian aggression; it was the press that voiced the ‘outrage of the French public’; but according to the reports of the local prefects and procurators, the ordinary people were unmoved. Although the French would fight – and die – in the Crimea in far greater numbers than the British, they were never as excited by the causes of the war as their allies were. If anything, the French were hostile to the idea of a war in which they would be allied with the English, their traditional enemy. It was widely felt that France was being dragged into a war that would be fought for British imperial interests – a theme constantly invoked by the opposition to Napoleon – and that France would pay the price for it. The business world was especially opposed to the idea of war, fearing higher taxes and a drain on the economy. There were predictions that before a year was out any war would become so unpopular that France would be forced to sue for peace.
The Crimean War Page 19