CONSTANTINOPLE.
When the second Russian ultimatum arrived, the Turkish Government did not hesitate a moment respecting the answer which it should receive—they determined at once to reject it. But being now assured, by the coming of the fleets, of the support of Britain and France, they betrayed no anxiety in so doing, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had no difficulty in obtaining the assent of the Sultan to the suggestion that he should protest, but not declare war, and should, on the contrary, offer to open fresh negotiations by sending an Ambassador to St. Petersburg. It was not supposed that the Emperor would assent to this, but the offer was in unison with the policy of the friendly Powers, and placed the aggressor still further in the wrong. On the 16th of June, the date of the answer to Count Nesselrode, when the step taken by the Porte was irrevocable, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe waited on the Sultan. His ostensible object was to present a letter from Queen Victoria announcing the birth of Prince Leopold, and to offer her Majesty's condolence on the severe affliction the Sultan had sustained in the loss of his mother, the Sultana Validé. Having accomplished this, he gave the Sultan more substantial comfort, by informing him with what friendly sentiments and "eventual intentions" the powerful fleet of Admiral Dundas, then at anchor in Besika Bay, had been placed at the Ambassador's disposal. At the same time, and in obedience to his instructions, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe told the Sultan that peace was the great object of British policy, and that the fleet would be used only to protect the Sultan from foreign aggression. On the 17th of June M. Balabine quitted Constantinople, carrying with him to Odessa the answer to Count Nesselrode's ultimatum, and the whole of the archives and correspondence of the Russian Legation. The answer was received in St. Petersburg about the 25th of June. It had been anticipated by the Russian Court, and orders were at once issued for the troops to cross the Pruth and occupy the Principalities.
Between the 1st and 30th of July, while the Russians were settling down in the Principalities and acting like proprietors, projects of settlement grew and withered apace. The Four Powers were endeavouring to find out what each thought and what each would do. The idea of a Conference at Vienna occurred to several persons at once. Lord Clarendon started a scheme, based on the project of a Convention between Russia and Turkey, which he drew up. M. Drouyn de Lhuys framed a note to be signed by Turkey, and accepted by Russia. There was Count Buol's project of a fusion of Russian and Turkish ideas. Independently of all this, the representatives of the Four Powers at Constantinople got up a scheme of their own, which proved to be distasteful to everybody but the Turks. Peace projectors abounded, while Russia steadily went on with her design, occupied the Principalities in a military fashion, seized on the post-office, intercepted the Sultan's tribute, sent gunboats up the Danube, and when the Porte recalled the Hospodars, induced them to disobey the Sultan's mandate, and forced him to dismiss them. Nor did Russia stop here. She sent emissaries into Servia and Bulgaria; she scattered her manifesto broadcast; she strove to raise a spirit of disaffection; and she replied with haughtiness to the complaints of the Western Powers. In the dominions of the Sultan a corresponding spirit arose. The Czar's manifesto had been read in all his churches; the Ulemas answered by sermons calculated to raise a spirit of counter-fanaticism. It was manifest that Turkish ardour was not extinct. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe began to fear more from the rashness than the timidity of the Divan. Military and naval preparations went on briskly, and by the middle of August the Sultan had the satisfaction of knowing that he could defend Shumla, the Balkan, and the Bosphorus, if pressed by the Czar. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe did not fail to lay before his Government the real issues at stake, nor did he disguise his doubts of the possibility of coming to a settlement without resort to war.
It was in these circumstances that Count Buol exerted himself at Vienna to frame a plan of conciliation. He took the draft of a note drawn up by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and by the aid of the representatives of the Four Powers at Vienna, and after frequent communication with London and Paris, he constructed out of this draft a note which he hoped would prove acceptable alike to Russia and Turkey. The design was to ascertain whether the Czar would accept the note, and if he agreed to do so, to send it to Constantinople, accompanied by urgent recommendations from the Four Powers to the Porte advising its acceptance. In taking this course, Austria acted as mediator at the request, or at least with the assent, of Russia; but the Russian Ambassador at Vienna would not attend the Conference, and his master was only represented there by a sort of friend. After great labour the note was framed, and a copy sent to St. Petersburg. The Powers took steps immediately to ascertain whether the Czar would accept the note, and they found that, although it did not give him satisfaction, he was content to accept it in a spirit of conciliation, as an arrangement devised by a friendly Government; and he was willing to take it from the hands of a Turkish Ambassador, provided it were not altered in any way. This was the famous "Vienna Note" which attracted so much attention, and raised so many hopes in the summer of 1853. But while Austria and the other Powers had consulted Russia and learnt her views, they had forgotten Turkey, for whose benefit the thing was supposed to be devised. They had not ascertained whether Turkey would or could sign it, and, indeed, in framing it, the Powers seemed more anxious to devise a form of words satisfactory to the Czar than safe in the eyes of the Sultan. And so, when it reached Constantinople, although backed by strong advices from all the Powers, and not least by England, the Porte declined to sign it, except in an amended form, which Lord Stratford de Redcliffe drew up, and to which the representatives of the Four Powers at the Porte agreed. The note, indeed, was found to confer rights on Russia almost as extensive as those she claimed through Prince Menschikoff. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, although he saw this, scrupulously executed the instructions of his Government, and pressed the note on the Porte. But the Sultan, the Ministers, and the Grand Council were firm. After much deliberation, the Grand Council, of sixty members, comprising the most distinguished statesmen of the capital, adopted a form of note embodying their views, but rather deferring to the plan suggested at Vienna. "If the decision," wrote Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, on the 20th of August, "does not completely represent the feeling of this country, it only fails in being framed with too much forbearance and moderation."
The news that the Porte would not sign the note, except in a modified form, vexed both Austria and England. Count Buol was chagrined, Lord Clarendon was angry. What the Four Powers most interested in preserving Turkish independence regarded as securing that independence, was surely, they said, a form of words which the Sultan might accept. They did not object to the changes made in the note as unreasonable in themselves—M. Drouyn de Lhuys, indeed, thought they were decided improvements—but they objected to them as unnecessary. The Four Powers would have assented to the interpretation put upon the note by the Porte, and Lord Clarendon had no doubt that Russia would have agreed with the Four Powers. But the Porte seemed to desire war, and had certainly made peace more difficult by the course it had pursued. In short, the friends of the Sultan were very angry with him for exercising his undoubted right, and looking sharply after his own independence. But if the Powers were angry, the Czar was enraged. He was beside himself when he thought on the fact that the Porte had refused what he had accepted. He would not at first discuss the modifications themselves. He would not think about them. What he objected to was, "any alteration—to the principle of alteration, to the fact of the Porte having done that which, out of regard to the wishes of the Allied Powers, his Imperial Majesty had refrained from doing." Count Nesselrode expressed his master's views with such asperity as polite diplomatists permit themselves to indulge in. If the Turks, he said, had had "the faintest perception of their own interests, they ought to have clutched at the note with both hands. That which the Emperor received without change or hesitation in the course of twenty-four hours, should unquestionably have been received by the Turks with the same expedition." The Emperor again saw in this defeat the hand of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and felt sure that the Turks had not been "made sufficiently sensible" of the dangers they incurred. The Emperor would concede no more. "Concession had reached its term." Further, a memorandum of Count Nesselrode's to his master was allowed to find its way into a Prussian paper, from which it appeared that the Czar placed an entirely different interpretation on the note to its authors'.
Nothing shows more clearly how far, although still professing identical views, the German Powers were separated from England and France, than the fact that Count Buol and Baron Manteuffel, after they were aware of the interpretation put on it by Russia, moved by the emphatic language of Count Nesselrode, did once more urge the Porte to sign the original note, and thus to sign away its independence. Far from being in real concert in August, they were less in concert with the Western Powers in the middle of September. The only Power which acted straight through with Britain was France, and the only divergence of policy apparent was this—the French Government did not seem to think the pace of the alliance fast enough, and were constantly urging the transmission of orders to the admirals to enter the Dardanelles. The plea was that the anchorage at Besika was unsafe. But this was seen to be absurd, and twice Lord Clarendon resisted the appeals sent by Louis Napoleon with the view of forcing the fleets upon the Sultan, and depriving Lord Stratford de Redcliffe of any discretion in the matter. This occurred during the negotiations on the new aspect imparted to affairs by the Russian acceptance and the Turkish rejection of the note. The German Powers, knowing what was the interpretation put upon the note by Russia, persisted in pressing it upon the Sultan. The Western Powers, always more respectful to Turkey, would not take part in this move: indeed, they could not do so. Count Nesselrode's comments on the modified note, showing that the Emperor of Russia did desire to seek new rights and extended power in Turkey, had proved to Britain and France that the apprehensions of the Porte, so far from being groundless, were justified by the Russian construction. Instead of asking the Porte, as they were disposed to do before they were in possession of the Russian views, to reconsider its decision, they now asked the Emperor to reconsider his. Austria, on the contrary, declared that if the Porte again disregarded her counsels, she should consider her efforts to effect a reconciliation at an end: further, that if Britain and France would not support her in this step, there would be an end to the conference at Vienna. In this opinion Britain and France agreed, and the conference at Vienna came to an end accordingly. The German Powers went one way, the Western Powers another; both professed to be hastening towards the same goal, but the German Powers went astray, whereas the Western Powers kept in the straight path. The secret of this was the personal ascendency which the Czar exercised over the German Courts, and which diverted them from their true course on the Eastern Question.
It may here be proper to describe in more detail the Vienna Note, on the terms of which, and on its modification, and the circumstances attending and following both, the preservation of peace depended. This note began by setting forth the desire of the Sultan to re-establish friendly relations between himself and the Czar; and then went on to state the terms of the proposed compromise. A difference arose on the first practical clause. As worded at Vienna, the note implied that immunities and privileges of the Orthodox Church existed as something independent of the Sultan's will, and declared that the Sultans had never refused to confirm them by solemn acts. The Turks could not subscribe to this. It was not historically true. It impeached the sovereign power of the Sultan. It implied that the Czar was protector by right of the Greek Church. Accordingly, the Porte, in modifying the note, took care to use words showing that these immunities and privileges had been "granted spontaneously," and confirmed spontaneously from time to time by the Sultans. This was the first amendment. The second practical clause, the origin of which was referred to the complaints of Prince Menschikoff, needed other corrections. The Vienna Note made the Sultan say that he would remain faithful "to the letter and spirit of the Treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople, relative to the protection of the Christian religion." Here was established an active protectorate. Now the Treaty of Kainardji applied only to one church in existence, and to one that was to be built, and gave Russia no rights to protect the Christian religion. This clause in the note would then have actually given an extension to that treaty. The Porte demurred, and rightly, modifying the clause by undertaking to remain faithful "to the stipulations of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople, relative to the protection by the Sublime Porte of the Christian religion." No one who knows the meaning of words can fail to see the practical distinction existing between the two forms of expression. In the Vienna Note the Sultan was made to declare that he would cause the Greek rite to share in the advantages granted to other Christian rites by convention or special arrangement. The Porte substituted the words, "granted or which might be granted to the other communities, Ottoman subjects," for the last words of the note. This was also an important and a needful change. Under various treaties Austria enjoyed large rights of interference respecting the Roman Catholic subjects of the Sultan. The terms of the original note would have conferred similar rights on Russia. "Such a concession," wrote Lord Stratford de Redcliffe on the 20th of August, "when practically claimed by Russia, would leave her nothing to desire as to the means of exercising a powerful influence on all the concerns of the Greek clergy, and interfering even on behalf of the Greek laity, subjects of the Porte.... Confined to Austria, the privilege in question may be exercised with little inconvenience to the Porte; but in the hands of Russia, applicable to twelve millions of the Sultan's tributary subjects, the same right becomes a natural object of suspicion and well-founded apprehension." In fact the original Vienna Note was as huge a diplomatic blunder as could possibly have been devised; Count Nesselrode's comments confirmed the view taken of it by the astute Turks; and combined with the temper displayed by Russia, convinced Britain and France that they had been flagrantly in the wrong when they assented to Count Buol's note and pressed its acceptance on the Porte.
There was, indeed, a peace party in the British Cabinet, prominent among whom was Lord Aberdeen, who still urged that the discrepancies in the two drafts were immaterial, and that the note in its original form might well be pressed on the Porte. They were, however, overruled by the advocates of a bolder policy, of whom Lord Palmerston was the most prominent, backed up by Lord John Russell, who, dissatisfied with his subordinate position, was in a discontented and captious frame of mind. In fact, the Cabinet became disunited on more than one question. Lord John Russell was pledged to introduce a Reform Bill, and Lord Palmerston, who disliked the re-opening of the question particularly in a time of foreign complications, resigned. He was induced to withdraw his resignation, but the breach thus made was not easily healed.
OMAR PASHA.