Through a singular aberration, the dismemberment of Turkey and the Turks’ eviction from Europe were being advocated at a time when the idea of the restoration of Russia had not yet been given up, for the various States now detached from the former Russian Empire had not yet been definitely recognised; and among the promoters or supporters of this policy were many defenders of old Russia under a more or less transparent disguise.
Though, from the point of view of European policy, the situation of the two countries widely differed, by dismembering Turkey before the Russian question was settled, at least in its solvable part—viz., with regard to the heterogeneous peoples—the Allies made a mistake of the same kind, or at least of the same magnitude, as the one they had made when they dismembered the Dual Monarchy and yet did not destroy German unity, or rather Prussian hegemony.
Russia had already taken possession of several Turkish territories, and not so long ago she plainly declared she had not given up her ambitious designs on Constantinople.
This open hostility of the Russians toward the Turks is of very long standing.
The first Russian attacks against Turkey, as explained in the early part of this book, date back to 1672. After the victory of Poltava, in 1709, which the next year gave him Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia, Peter the Great turned against the Turks, the allies of Charles XII, King of Sweden. But Charles XII, who had sought shelter at Bender, in Turkey, after the battle of Poltava, brought over the Grand Vizier Baltaji Mohammed to his views, and induced him to declare war on Turkey. Peter the Great, encircled by the Turks at Hush, between the Pruth and the marshes, was going to capitulate when Catherine I, in order to save him, made peace by bribing the Grand Vizier, who soon after was exiled to Mytilene. The Turks only demanded the restitution of Azov in 1711. In 1732 Peter the Great took from Persia the provinces of Daghestan, Derbend, Shirwan, Mazandaran, and Astrabad. At that time, while Villeneuve was ambassador at Constantinople (1728-41) and Austria and Russia began to turn greedy eyes on Turkey, France declared “the existence of Turkey was necessary to the peace of Christendom,” and later on Choiseul-Gouffier, who was the French king’s last ambassador from 1784 to 1792, strove to save the Turks from the ambitious designs of Catherine II.
Catherine, taking advantage of the intrigues carried on in the Morea with two Greeks, Papas-Oghlou and Benaki, dispatched a fleet to the Mediterranean to bring about a Greek rising against Turkey; the Ottoman fleet which sought shelter at Tchesmé, on the coast of Asia Minor, was burnt by Russian fireships on July 7, 1770.
After the 1770-74 war, the Porte, which was Poland’s ally, lost Bukovina and Lesser Tatary, whose independence was recognised by the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji on July 21, 1774, but which became a Russian province in 1783. The treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji ceded Kinburn and Yenikale to Russia, left to the Christians the principalities lying to the north of the Danube, and guaranteed the Orthodox Greeks’ liberty under the patronage of the Russian ambassador at Constantinople. Catherine II also compelled the Turks by the same treaty not to defend the independence of Poland, threatened by Russia with the complicity of the Great Powers, and to give her a right of intervention in their home affairs. The Tatars of the Crimea and Kuban, detached from Turkey, soon after fell under the Russian sway, in 1783. The Sultan even had to sign a treaty granting a right of free navigation in the Black Sea and in the rivers of his empire.
About the same time the European Powers began to interfere in Turkey: that was the beginning of the “Eastern question.” In opposition to the Austro-Russian alliance of Catherine and Joseph II, England, dissatisfied with Russia’s attitude in the American War of Independence, and wishing to find allies in Germany to counterbalance Russian influence in Europe, concluded an alliance with Prussia, Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. The death of Frederic II soon put an end to this coalition, and Russia’s unfriendly attitude, her encroachments in Caucasus, and her territorial claims in Bessarabia, compelled Turkey on August 16, 1787, to declare war on Catherine, and Joseph II entered into the war in 1788. The Austrians took Khotin; the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Otchakov; Belgrade fell on October 8, 1789. Then Leopold, Joseph II’s brother, left the Turks and made peace with Turkey at Sistova on August 4, 1791. The Russians, who had defeated the Turks at Machin, were about to invade the Empire when, as a result of the intervention of England and Prussia, a treaty of peace was signed at Jassy, by which the Dniester became the new frontier between the two States. Thus Russia, who owing to the perturbed state of Europe was preparing to dismember Poland, was compelled to give up her dream of restoring the Byzantine Empire.