In 1821 broke out the Greek insurrection. Suppressed in Moldavia and Wallachia, where it originated, it soon acquired strength in the Greek islands and the Morea. Excesses were natural on both sides, and committed by the conquering race, determined to maintain its power, and by the subjugated one, struggling to throw off its chains. The Greek Patriarch was murdered at Constantinople, and a series of savage butcheries succeeded and accompanied this act of slaughter.
By these events Russia was placed in a peculiar and embarrassing position. She could not countenance insurrection; her system of policy just displayed in Italy could not be reversed in Greece. But the sympathies of religion, and the policy she had long pursued (that of placing herself at the head of the Christian subjects of the Porte by always assuming the air of their protectress), demanded some manifestation of interest in the cause of the rebels. She came forward, then, denouncing the attempt at revolution on the one hand, but protesting on the other against the feelings which this attempt had excited, and the means which had been taken to suppress it. The re-establishment of the Greek Church, the safe exercise of the Christian religion, were insisted upon. The indiscriminate massacre of Christians, and the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Turkish troops, were loudly condemned. A reply within the time fixed not having been given to the note in which these remonstrances were expressed the Russian Ambassador quitted Constantinople, and war seemed imminent.
But it was the desire of Austria and England especially to prevent war, and their joint representations finally succeeded in persuading the Sultan to satisfy the Russian demands; consequently, shortly after Mr. Canning’s accession to office, the Greek churches were rebuilt, and the Principalities evacuated, while wanton outrages against the Rayah population were punished with due justice and severity.
Russia, however, now made new requests; even these, through the negotiations of the British ambassador at Constantinople, were complied with; and, finally, after some hesitations and prevarications, the cabinet of St. Petersburg renewed its diplomatic relations with the Porte.
Still it was not difficult to perceive that all the differences hitherto arranged were slight in comparison with those which must arise if the Greek struggle long continued unsettled. In ordinary times, indeed, we shrink before the possibility of a power (whose empire, however wide, conquest would long keep cemented) establishing itself across the whole of Europe, and holding on either side, here at the Straits of the Baltic, there on those of the Mediterranean, the means of carrying on war, or securing safety and peace as it might seem easy to obtain victory, or advisable to avoid defeat; a power which, placed in this position, would demand the constant vigilance of our fleets, establish an enormous and perpetual drain upon our resources, and which appeared not unlikely to carry through Persia (the governor of which would be merely one of her satraps) disorder and destruction to our Indian empire. In ordinary times this gigantic vision, when seen but dimly and at a distance, has more than once alarmed our government and excited our nation. But the tardy struggle of that race for independence, to whose genius and spirit we owe our earliest dreams of freedom—a struggle in which we were called upon to side with Greeks fighting for Liberty, with Christians contending for Christianity, had awakened feelings which overwhelmed all customary considerations. A paramount enthusiasm, to which a variety of causes, and especially the verses of our great and fashionable poet, were contributing, had seized upon the public mind, and was destined for a while to be omnipotent. Guarded by that enthusiasm, Russia might have planted her eagles upon the walls of Constantinople, if she had appeared as the champion of that land
——“of gods, and godlike men,”
which had at last “exchanged the slavish sickle for the sword,” and it is doubtful whether an English Minister could have found a Parliament that would at that moment have sanctioned his defence of the Mahometan power.
X.
Mr. Canning, then, had either to allow the Russian cabinet to pursue its unavowed policy uncontrolled, or to limit its action by connecting himself with the policy which it professed. The contest, it was evident, after the first successes that had attended the Porte’s revolted subjects, would not be allowed to terminate in their subjugation. With the co-operation, or without the co-operation of Great Britain, the Morea was certain to be wrested from the Turks. To stand by neutral, calm spectators of what was certain to take place was to lose our consideration equally with the Ottoman empire and with Christian Europe, and to give to the Government which acted alone in this emergency, as the representative of an universal feeling, an almost universal prestige. But if our interference was expedient, the only question that could arise was as to the time and manner of our interfering.
As early as 1824 Count Nesselrode had had a plan for placing Greece in the situation of the Principalities of the Danube, and the great powers of Europe were invited to consider the subject. Mr. Canning was not averse to this project; but he hoped little from the discordant counsels of the five or six governments called upon to accept it; more especially as both Greece and Turkey, to whom it had become accidentally known, were equally dissatisfied; and he was therefore very properly unwilling to bind his government by a share in conferences which he foresaw were doomed to be fruitless. In short, the negotiators met and separated, and the negotiation failed.