But Russia did not gain by the transaction, for she in her turn lost her single-handed power over Turkey, which was given into the hands of the Five Powers.
Lord Palmerston offered the following condition to the Turkish Government. “England having, in conjunction with other Christian Powers, succeeded in restoring Syria to the Sultan, she is entitled to expect that the Sultan, in return for such assistance, should secure his Christian subjects from oppression.”[[56]]
At last the Syrian affairs were settled, but still England was always dreading a French attack both on Egypt and Syria.
In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas paid his famous visit to England. What was his object in coming to England at such a period? The only idea that I can put forward is, that he wanted to see to what extent the Anglo-French disagreement[[57]] with regard to Syrian affairs had reached; also to widen them as much as possible in order to make it impossible to form an Anglo-French alliance against him, and thus leave him a free hand in the settlement of the Eastern Question when the fall of Turkey should take place.
Nicholas was at once informed, after his arrival, by the British Prime Minister, “that no foreign influence in Egypt would be allowed by the British Government, who desired to keep the way open to India.” He at once perceived that the English were fearful of the French historic Napoleonic plans; and he at once used this fear to his advantage.
He first proposed a partition of Turkey, knowing that the English Government would not dare to agree to it, because it would hurt the national feeling of England. Soon after the Anti-Napoleonic Revolution was over the Holy Alliance was concluded between several European Courts, and the moral feelings in the western states of Europe were to defend the weak against the strong, and to resist unjust aggression. These feelings were clearly shown during the Russian oppression of Poland (1837), and in the Independence of Greece (1821–1829).
In England these feelings had manifested themselves, and any English Government which should venture to shock them would have been certainly upset. Therefore, a proposed partition of Turkey by Russia was received by the English Government with decided disfavour.
Then the Czar proposed that the guardianship of the Holy Land should be entrusted to Russia. This was his great aim, and was his principal object.
England found herself in a dilemma. What was she to do? She had already refused the Czar’s first proposal, and she felt obliged to accept the second. “The three representatives of the Conservative party, namely, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen, met the Czar and signed a secret memorandum, promising to exert their personal influence on behalf of the Greeks as opposed to the Latin Church at Jerusalem, and so practically to forward Russian claims to the guardianship of the Holy Places, as opposed to those of France, who was to be ignored in the matter. This memorandum, to a certain extent favouring Russia’s claim to a protectorate of the Greek Church, was never placed in the Foreign Office archives, but was forwarded in succession from one English Foreign Secretary to another, until, as we shall show, poor Lord Aberdeen (Wellington and Peel being dead) was called on for his pound of flesh in 1853.”[[58]]
Thus Nicholas attained the end he had in view, and left England, well pleased with the brilliant reception he had met with. “The Greek and the Catholic Church,” Lord Palmerston had written to Canning, 1849, “are merely other names for Russian and French influence.”