Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

C >> C. A. Fyffe >> History of Modern Europe 1792 1878




[Anglo-Russian Protocol, April 4, 1826.]

It has been stated, and with some probability of truth, that the military
insurrection of 1825 disposed the new Czar to a more vigorous policy
abroad. The conspirators, when on their trial, declared it to have been
their intention to throw the army at once into an attack upon the Turks;
and in so doing they would certainly have had the feeling of the nation on
their side. Nicholas himself had little or no sympathy for the Greeks. They
were a democratic people, and the freedom which they sought to gain was
nothing but anarchy. "Do not speak of the Greeks," he said to the
representative of a foreign power, "I call them the rebels." Nevertheless,
little as Nicholas wished to serve the Greek democracy, both inclination
and policy urged him to make an end of his predecessor's faint-hearted
system of negotiation, and to bring the struggle in the East to a summary
close. Canning had already, in conversation with the Russian ambassador at
London, discussed a possible change of policy on the part of the two rival
Courts. He now saw that time had come for establishing new relations
between Great Britain and Russia, and for attempting that co-operation in
the East which he had held to be impracticable during Alexander's reign.
The Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg, nominally to offer the
usual congratulations to the new sovereign, in reality to dissuade him from
going to war, and to propose either the separate intervention of England or
a joint intervention by England and Russia on behalf of Greece. The mission
was successful. It was in vain that Metternich endeavoured to entangle the
new Czar in the diplomatic web that had so long held his predecessor. The
spell of the Holy Alliance was broken. Nicholas looked on the past
influence of Austria on the Eastern Question only with resentment; he would
hear of no more conferences of ambassadors; and on the 4th of April, 1826,
a Protocol was signed at St. Petersburg, by which Great Britain and Russia
fixed the conditions under which the mediation of the former Power was to
be tendered to the Porte. Greece was to remain tributary to the Sultan; it
was, however, to be governed by its own elected authorities, and to be
completely independent in its commercial relations. The policy known in our
own day as that of bag-and-baggage expulsion was to be carried out in a far
more extended sense than that in which it has been advocated by more recent
champions of the subject races of the East; the Protocol of 1826
stipulating for the removal not only of Turkish officials but of the entire
surviving Turkish population of Greece. All property belonging to the
Turks, whether on the continent or in the islands, was to be purchased by
the Greeks. [373]

Thus was the first step taken in the negotiations which ended in the
establishment of Hellenic independence. The Protocol, which had been
secretly signed, was submitted after some interval to the other Courts of
Europe. At Vienna it was received with the utmost disgust. Metternich had
at first declared the union of England and Russia to be an impossibility.
When this union was actually established, no language was sufficiently
strong to express his mortification and his spite. At one moment he
declared that Canning was a revolutionist who had entrapped the young and
inexperienced Czar into an alliance with European radicalism; at another,
that England had made itself the cat's-paw of Russian ambition. Not till
now, he protested, could Europe understand what it had lost in Castlereagh.
Nor did Metternich confine himself to lamentations. While his
representatives at Paris and Berlin spared no effort to excite the
suspicion of those Courts against the Anglo-Russian project of
intervention, the Austrian ambassador at London worked upon King George's
personal hostility to Canning, and conspired against the Minister with that
important section of the English aristocracy which was still influenced by
the traditional regard for Austria. Berlin, however, was the only field
where Metternich's diplomacy still held its own. King Frederick William had
not yet had time to acquire the habit of submission to the young Czar
Nicholas, and was therefore saved the pain of deciding which of two masters
he should obey. In spite of his own sympathy for the Greeks, he declined to
connect Prussia with the proposed joint-intervention, and remained passive,
justifying this course by the absence of any material interests of Prussia
in the East. Being neither a neighbour of the Ottoman Empire nor a maritime
Power, Prussia had in fact no direct means of making its influence felt.

[Treaty between England, Russia and France, July, 1827.]

France, on whose action much more depended, was now governed wholly in the
interests of the Legitimist party. Louis XVIII. had died in 1824, and the
Count of Artois had succeeded to the throne, under the title of Charles X.
The principles of the Legitimists would logically have made them defenders
of the hereditary rights of the Sultan against his rebellious subjects; but
the Sultan, unlike Ferdinand of Spain, was not a Bourbon nor even a
Christian; and in a case where the legitimate prince was an infidel and the
rebels were Christians, the conscience of the most pious Legitimist might
well recoil from the perilous task of deciding between the divine rights of
the Crown and the divine rights of the Church, and choose, in so painful an
emergency, the simpler course of gratifying the national love of action.
There existed, both among Liberals and among Ultramontanes, a real sympathy
for Greece, and this interest was almost the only one in which all French
political sections felt that they had something in common. Liberals
rejoiced in the prospect of making a new free State in Europe; Catholics,
like Charles X. himself, remembered Saint Louis and the Crusades;
diplomatists understood the extreme importance of the impending breach
between Austria and Russia, and of the opportunity of allying France with
the latter Power. Thus the natural and disinterested impulse of the greater
part of the public coincided exactly with the dictates of a far-seeing
policy; and the Government, in spite of its Legitimist principles and of
some assurances given to Metternich in person when he visited Paris in
1825, determined to accept the policy of the Anglo-Russian intervention in
the East, and to participate in the active measures about to be taken by
the two Powers. The Protocol of St. Petersburg formed the basis of a
definitive treaty which was signed at London in July, 1827. By this act
England, Russia, and France undertook to put an end to the conflict in the
East, which, through the injury done to the commerce of all nations, had
become a matter of European concern. The contending parties were to be
summoned to accept the mediation of the Powers and to consent to an
armistice. Greece was to be made autonomous, under the paramount
sovereignty of the Sultan; the Mohammedan population of the Greek provinces
was, as in the Protocol of St. Petersburg, to be entirely removed; and the
Greeks were to enter upon possession of all Turkish property within their
limits, paying an indemnity to the former owners. Each of the three
contracting Governments pledged itself to seek no increase of territory in
the East, and no special commercial advantages. In the secret articles of
the treaty provisions were made for the case of the rejection by the Turks
of the proposed offer of mediation. Should the armistice not be granted
within one month, the Powers agreed that they would announce to each
belligerent their intention to prevent further encounters, and that they
would take the necessary steps for enforcing this declaration, without,
however, taking part in hostilities themselves. Instructions in conformity
with the Treaty were to be sent to the Admirals commanding the
Mediterranean squadrons of the three Powers. [374]

[Death of Canning, August, 1827.]

[Policy of Canning.]

Scarcely was the Treaty of London signed when Canning died. He had
definitely broken from the policy of his predecessors, that policy which,
for the sake of guarding against Russia's advance, had condemned the
Christian races of the East to 1827. eternal subjection to the Turk, and
bound up Great Britain with the Austrian system of resistance to the very
principle and name of national independence. Canning was no blind friend to
Russia. As keenly as any of his adversaries he appreciated the importance
of England's interests in the East; of all English statesmen of that time
he would have been the last to submit to any diminution of England's just
influence or power. But, unlike his predecessors, he saw that there were
great forces at work which, whether with England's concurrence or in spite
of it, would accomplish that revolution in the East for which the time was
now come; and he was statesman enough not to acquiesce in the belief that
the welfare of England was in permanent and necessary antagonism to the
moral interests of mankind and the better spirit of the age. Therefore,
instead of attempting to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, or
holding aloof and resorting to threats and armaments while Russia
accomplished the liberation of Greece by itself, he united with Russia in
this work, and relied on concerted action as the best preventive against
the undue extension of Russia's influence in the East. In committing
England to armed intervention, Canning no doubt hoped that the settlement
of the Greek question arranged by the Powers would be peacefully accepted
by the Sultan, and that a separate war between Russia and the Porte, on
this or any other issue, would be averted. Neither of these hopes was
realised. The joint-intervention had to be enforced by arms, and no sooner
had the Allies struck their common blow than a war between Turkey and
Russia followed. How far the course of events might have been modified had
Canning's life not been cut short it is impossible to say; but whether his
statesmanship might or might not have averted war on the Danube, the
balance of results proved his policy to have been the right one. Greece was
established as an independent State, to supply in the future a valuable
element of resistance to Slavic preponderance in the Levant; and the
encounter between Russia and Turkey, so long dreaded, produced none of
those disastrous effects which had been anticipated from it. On the
relative value of Canning's statesmanship as compared with that of his
predecessors, the mind of England and of Europe has long been made up. He
stands among those who have given to this country its claim to the respect
of mankind. His monument, as well as his justification, is the existence of
national freedom in the East; and when half a century later a British
Government reverted to the principle of nonintervention, as it had been
understood by Castlereagh, and declined to enter into any effective
co-operation with Russia for the emancipation of Bulgaria, even then, when
the precedent of Canning's action in 1827 stood in direct and glaring
contradiction to the policy of the hour, no effective attempt was made by
the leaders of the party to which Canning had belonged to impugn his
authority, or to explain away his example. It might indeed be alleged that
Canning had not explicitly resolved on the application of force; but those
who could maintain that Canning would, like Wellington, have used the
language of apology and regret when Turkish obstinacy had made it
impossible to effect the object of his intervention by any other means, had
indeed read the history of Canning's career in vain. [375]

[Intervention of the Admirals, Sept., 1927.]

The death of Canning, which brought his rival, the Duke of Wellington,
after a short interval to the head of affairs, caused at the moment no
avowed change in the execution of his plans. In accordance with the
provisions of the Treaty of London the mediation of the allied Powers was
at once tendered to the belligerents, and an armistice demanded. The
armistice was accepted by the Greeks; it was contemptuously refused by the
Turks. In consequence of this refusal the state of war continued, as it
would have been absurd to ask the Greeks to sit still and be massacred
because the enemy declined to lay down his arms. The Turk being the party
resisting the mediation agreed upon, it became necessary to deprive him of
the power of continuing hostilities. Heavy reinforcements had just arrived
from Egypt, and an expedition was on the point of sailing from Navarino,
the gathering place of Ibrahim's forces, against Hydra, the capture of
which would have definitely made an end of the Greek insurrection. Admiral
Codrington, the commander of the British fleet, and the French Admiral De
Rigny, were now off the coast of Greece. They addressed themselves to
Ibrahim, and required from him a promise that he would make no movement
until further orders should arrive from Constantinople. Ibrahim made this
promise verbally on the 25th of September. A few days later, however,
Ibrahim learnt that while he himself was compelled to be inactive, the
Greeks, continuing hostilities as they were entitled to do, had won a
brilliant naval victory under Captain Hastings within the Gulf of Corinth.
Unable to control his anger, he sailed out from the harbour of Navarino,
and made for Patras. Codrington, who had stationed his fleet at Zante,
heard of the movement, and at once threw himself across the track of the
Egyptian, whom he compelled to turn back by an energetic threat to sink his
fleet. Had the French and Russian contingents been at hand, Codrington
would have taken advantage of Ibrahim's sortie to cut him off from all
Greek harbours, and to force him to return direct to Alexandria, thus
peaceably accomplishing the object of the intervention. This, however, to
the misfortune of Ibrahim's seamen, the English admiral could not do alone.
Ibrahim re-entered Navarino, and there found the orders of the Sultan for
which it had been agreed that he should wait. These orders were dictated by
true Turkish infatuation. They bade Ibrahim continue the subjugation of the
Morea with the utmost vigour, and promised him the assistance of Reschid
Pasha, his rival in the siege of Missolonghi. Ibrahim, perfectly reckless
of the consequences, now sent out his devastating columns again. No life,
and nothing that could support life, was spared. Not only were the crops
ravaged, but the fruit-trees, which are the permanent support of the
country, were cut down at the roots. Clouds of fire and smoke from burning
villages showed the English officers who approached the coast in what
spirit the Turk met their proposals for a pacification. "It is supposed
that if Ibrahim remained in Greece," wrote Captain Hamilton, "more than a
third of its inhabitants would die of absolute starvation."

[Battle of Navarino, Oct. 20th, 1827.]

It became necessary to act quickly, the more so as the season was far
advanced, and a winter blockade of Ibrahim's fleet was impossible. A
message was sent to the Egyptian head-quarters, requiring that hostilities
should cease, that the Morea should be evacuated, and the Turko-Egyptian
fleet return to Constantinople and Alexandria. In answer to this message
there came back a statement that Ibrahim had left Navarino for the interior
of the country, and that it was not known where to find him. Nothing now
remained for the admirals but to make their presence felt. On the 18th of
October it was resolved that the English, French, and Russian fleets, which
were now united, should enter the harbour of Navarino in battle order. The
movement was called a demonstration, and in so far as the admirals had not
actually determined upon making an attack, it was not directly a hostile
measure; but every gun was ready to open fire, and it was well understood
that any act of resistance on the part of the opposite fleet would result
in hostilities. Codrington, as senior officer, took command of the allied
squadron, and the instructions which he gave to his colleagues for the
event of a general engagement concluded with Nelson's words, that no
captain could do very wrong who placed his ship alongside that of an enemy.

Thus, ready to strike hard, the English admiral sailed into the harbour of
Navarino at noon on October 20, followed by the French and the Russians.
The allied fleet advanced to within pistol-shot of the Ottoman ships and
there anchored. A little to the windward of the position assigned to the
English corvette _Dartmouth_ there lay a Turkish fire-ship. A request
was made that this dangerous vessel might be removed to a safer distance;
it was refused, and a boat's crew was then sent to cut its cable. The boat
was received with musketry fire. This was answered by the _Dartmouth_
and by a French ship, and the battle soon became general. Codrington, still
desirous to avoid bloodshed, sent his pilot to Moharem Bey, who commanded
in Ibrahim's absence, proposing to withhold fire on both sides. Moharem
replied with cannon-shot, killing the pilot and striking Codrington's own
vessel. This exhausted the patience of the English admiral, who forthwith
made his adversary a mere wreck. The entire fleets on both sides were now
engaged. The Turks had a superiority of eight hundred guns, and fought with
courage. For four hours the battle raged at close quarters in the
land-locked harbour, while twenty thousand of Ibrahim's soldiers watched
from the surrounding hills the struggle in which they could take no part.
But the result of the combat was never for a moment doubtful. The confusion
and bad discipline of the Turkish fleet made it an easy prey. Vessel after
vessel was sunk or blown to pieces, and before evening fell the work of the
allies was done. When Ibrahim returned from his journey on the following
day he found the harbour of Navarino strewed with wrecks and dead bodies.
Four thousand of his seamen had fallen; the fleet which was to have
accomplished the reduction of Hydra was utterly ruined. [376]

[Inaction of England after Navarino.]

Over all Greece it was at once felt that the nation was saved. The
intervention of the Powers had been sudden and decisive beyond the most
sanguine hopes; and though this intervention might be intended to establish
something less than the complete independence of Greece, the violence of
the first collision bade fair to carry the work far beyond the bounds
originally assigned to it. The attitude of the Porte after the news of the
battle of Navarino reached Constantinople was exactly that which its worst
enemies might have desired. So far from abating anything in its resistance
to the mediation of the three Powers, it declared the attack made upon its
navy to be a crime and an outrage, and claimed satisfaction for it from the
ambassadors of the Allied Powers. Arguments proved useless, and the united
demand for an armistice with the Greeks having been finally and
contemptuously refused, the ambassadors, in accordance with their
instructions, quitted the Turkish capital (Dec. 8). Had Canning been still
living, it is probable that the first blow of Navarino would have been
immediately followed by the measures necessary to make the Sultan submit to
the Treaty of London, and that the forces of Great Britain would have been
applied with sufficient vigour to render any isolated action on the part of
Russia both unnecessary and impossible. But at this critical moment a
paralysis fell over the English Government. Canning's policy was so much
his own, he had dragged his colleagues so forcibly with him in spite of
themselves, that when his place was left empty no one had the courage
either to fulfil or to reverse his intentions, and the men who succeeded
him acted as if they were trespassers in the fortress which Canning had
taken by storm. The very ground on which Wellington, no less than Canning,
had justified the agreement made with Russia in 1826 was the necessity of
preventing Russia from acting alone; and when Russian and Turkish ships had
actually fought at Navarino, and war was all but formally declared, it
became more imperative than ever that Great Britain should keep the most
vigorous hold upon its rival, and by steady, consistent pressure let it be
known to both Turks and Russians that the terms of the Treaty of London and
no others must be enforced. To retire from action immediately after dealing
the Sultan one dire, irrevocable blow, without following up this stroke or
attaining the end agreed upon--to leave Russia to take up the armed
compulsion where England had dropped it, and to win from its crippled
adversary the gains of a private and isolated war--was surely the weakest
of all possible policies that could have been adopted. Yet this was the
policy followed by English Ministers during that interval of transition and
incoherence that passed between Canning's death and the introduction of the
Reform Bill.

[War between Russia and Turkey, April, 1828.]

By the Russian Government nothing was more ardently desired than a contest
with Turkey, in which England and France, after they had destroyed the
Turkish fleet, should be mere on-lookers, debarred by the folly of the
Porte itself from prohibiting or controlling hostilities between it and its
neighbour. There might indeed be some want of a pretext for war, since all
the points of contention between Russia and Turkey other than those
relating to Greece had been finally settled in Russia's favour by a Treaty
signed at Akerman in October, 1826. But the spirit of infatuation had
seized the Sultan, or a secret hope that the Western Powers would in the
last resort throw over the Court of St. Petersburg led him to hurry on
hostilities by a direct challenge to Russia. A proclamation which reads
like the work of some frantic dervish, though said to have been composed by
Mahmud himself, called the Mussulman world to arms. Russia was denounced as
the instigator of the Greek rebellion, and the arch-enemy of Islam. The
Treaty of Akerman was declared to have been extorted by compulsion and to
have been signed only for the purpose of gaining time. "Russia has imparted
its own madness to the other Powers and persuaded them to make an alliance
to free the Rayah from his Ottoman master. But the Turk does not count his
enemies. The law forbids the people of Islam to permit any injury to be
done to their religion; and if all the unbelievers together unite against
them, they will enter on the war as a sacred duty, and trust in God for
protection." This proclamation was followed by a levy of troops and the
expulsion of most of the Christian residents in Constantinople. Russia
needed no other pretext. The fanatical outburst of the Sultan was treated
by the Court of St. Petersburg as if it had been the deliberate expression
of some civilised Power, and was answered on the 26th of April, 1828, by a
declaration of war. In order to soften the effect of this step and to reap
the full benefit of its subsisting relations with France and England,
Russia gave a provisional undertaking to confine its operations as a
belligerent to the mainland and the Black Sea, and within the Mediterranean
to act still as one of the allied neutrals under the terms of the Treaty of
London.

[Military condition of Turkey.]

The moment seized by Russia for the declaration of war was one singularly
favourable to itself and unfortunate for its adversary. Not only had the
Turkish fleet been destroyed by the neutrals, but the old Turkish force of
the Janissaries had been destroyed by its own master, and the new-modelled
regiments which were to replace it had not yet been organised. The Sultan
had determined in 1826 to postpone his long-planned military reform no
longer, and to stake everything on one bold stroke against the Janissaries.
Troops enough were brought up from the other side of the Bosphorus to make
Mahmud certain of victory. The Janissaries were summoned to contribute a
proportion of their number to the regiments about to be formed on the
European pattern; and when they proudly refused to do so and raised the
standard of open rebellion they were cut to pieces and exterminated by
Mahmud's Anatolian soldiers in the midst of Constantinople. [377] The
principal difficulty in the way of a reform of the Turkish army was thus
removed and the work of reorganisation was earnestly taken in hand; but
before there was time to complete it the enemy entered the field. Mahmud
had to meet the attack of Russia with an army greatly diminished in number,
and confused by the admixture of European and Turkish discipline. The
resources of the empire were exhausted by the long struggle with Greece,
and, above all, the destruction of the Janissaries had left behind it an
exasperation which made the Sultan believe that rebellion might at any
moment break out in his own capital. Nevertheless, in spite of its inherent
weakness and of all the disadvantages under which it entered into war,
Turkey succeeded in prolonging its resistance through two campaigns, and
might, with better counsels, have tried the fortune of a third.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.