“Article 9. To draw as close as possible to Constantinople and India, for he who rules over that city will rule over the world. It is advisable, therefore, to bring about continual wars, now in Turkey, now in Persia, to establish shipbuilding yards on the Black Sea, gradually to get the mastery of that sea and of the Baltic Sea—the possession of these two seas being absolutely necessary for the triumph of our plans—to hurry on the decay of Persia, to advance as far as the Persian Gulf, to restore the once thriving Eastern trade, if possible through Syria, and to advance as far as India, the emporium of the world.
“When once we are there, we shall no longer be dependent on English gold.
“Article 11. To show the House of Austria it has an interest in ejecting the Turks from Europe, and to neutralise her jealousy when we shall conquer Constantinople, either by bringing about a war between her and the old European States, or by giving her a share of the conquest—and take it back from her later on.”
Russia never gave up this policy; indeed, she did not carry out her plans by force of arms, for the other Powers would have opposed them; but she resorted to all possible means to ensure its triumph. She constantly aimed at the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by supporting and grouping the Christian elements included in this empire, especially those of Slavonic race and Orthodox faith; and thus she really partitioned the Empire and bound to herself the old Ottoman provinces now raised to the rank of autonomous States. She acted most cautiously, and in order to carry out her plans peacefully she sought to dismember Turkey gradually and weaken her in order to finally rule over her. It has been rightly said that as early as 1770 the Russians opened the Eastern question exactly as it stands to-day, and already advocated the solution they have always insisted upon.[45]
A century ago Alexander I declared it was time to drive the Turks out of Europe. Talleyrand, in the account he gave of the conversations between that Emperor and the French ambassador, relates that he said one day:
“Now is the time to give the plans laid down by us at Tilsit the liberal aspect that befits the deeds of enlightened sovereigns. Our age, still more than our policy, requires that the Turks be driven into Asia; it will be a noble deed to free these beautiful lands. Humanity wants the eviction of those barbarians; civilisation demands it.”
But Napoleon had fully understood the Russian policy, for at the end of his life he said at St. Helena: “I could have shared Turkey with Russia; many a time did I speak about it with the Emperor, Alexander I, but every time Constantinople proved the stumbling-block. The Tsar demanded it, and I could not cede it; for it is too precious a key; it is worth an empire.”
At the memorable sitting of the House of Commons of March 29, 1791, some speakers expressed the anxiety felt in Great Britain, just after Catherine II had annexed the Crimea, lest the Russians should capture the whole of the East. But Fox, the leader of the Liberal party, declared he saw no ground for fear in the constant increase of Muscovite power; he did his best to please the Tsarina, who, on her side, continued to flatter him to obtain what she wanted from England; he recalled that the British themselves had opened the Mediterranean to Russian ships twenty years before, and he had told the French Minister Vergennes, who desired him to protest against the annexation of the Crimea, that Great Britain did not wish to raise any difficulty with Catherine II.
Unfortunately, the Marquis de Villeneuve, Louis XV’s ambassador, and the Comte de Bonneval, who had been converted to Islam, had been the last Frenchmen who had supported the Sublime Porte against the Russian Tsar’s hostility and endeavoured to use Islam as the protector of the liberty of peoples imperilled by the Tsars; and yet this old policy of France had the advantage both of benefiting French trade and counterbalancing the power of the enemies of France.[46] On the other hand, at the Congress of Sistovo in 1791, Sir Robert Murray Keith, who acted as mediator in the conclusion of the Austro-Turkish treaty of peace, recommended his fellow-countrymen “to let the Turks dwindle down in their own dull way.” So now French policy and English policy were going the same way.
During the reign of Charles X, the Polignac Cabinet was willing to sacrifice Constantinople to the Russians in return for the left bank of the Rhine, and in 1828 Chateaubriand, French ambassador at Rome, favoured an alliance with the Tsar in order to obtain the revision of the 1815 treaties, at the cost of Constantinople. Moreover, Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, by destroying the Turco-Egyptian fleet at Navarino on October 20, 1827, with the combined fleets of Great Britain, France, and Russia, furthered the Russian Tsar’s plans.