1848 IN EUROPE--CRIMEAN WAR.
The Revolution of 1831 was only the mild precursor of the one which shook
Europe to its foundations in 1848. It had centers wherever there were
patriots and aching hearts. In Paris, Louis Philippe had fled at the
sound of the word Republic, and when in Paris workmen were waving the
national banner of Poland, with awakened hope, even that land was
quivering with excitement. In Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand, unable to
meet the storm, abdicated in favor of his young nephew, Francis Joseph.
Hungary, obedient to the voice of her great patriot, Louis Kossuth, in
April, 1849, declared itself free and independent. It was the Hungarians
who had offered the most encouragement and sympathy to the Poles in 1831;
so Nicholas determined to make them feel the weight of his hand. Upon
the pretext that thousands of Polish exiles--his subjects--were in the
ranks of the insurgents, a Russian army marched into Hungary. By the
following August the revolution was over--thousands of Hungarian patriots
had died for naught, thousands more had fled to Turkey, and still other
thousands were suffering from Austrian vengeance administered by the
terrible General Haynau. Francis Joseph, that gentle and benign
sovereign, who sits today upon the throne at Vienna, subjected Hungary to
more cruelties than had been inflicted by Nicholas in Poland. Not only
were the germs of nationality destroyed--the Constitution and the Diet
abolished, the national language, church, and institutions effaced; but
revolting cruelties and executions continued for years. Kossuth, who
with a few other leaders, was an exile and a prisoner in Asia Minor, was
freed by the intervention of European sentiment in 1851. The United
States government then sent a frigate and conveyed him and his friends to
America, where the great Hungarian thrilled the people by the magic of
his eloquence in their own language, which he had mastered during his
imprisonment by means of a Bible and a dictionary.
It was to Russia that Austria was indebted for a result so satisfactory.
The Emperor Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg, feeling that he had
earned the everlasting gratitude of the young ruler Francis Joseph,
little suspecting that he was before long to say of him that "his
ingratitude astonished Europe."
There can be no doubt that the Emperor Nicholas, while he was, in common
with the other powers, professing to desire the preservation of Ottoman
integrity, had secretly resolved not to leave the Eastern Question to
posterity, but to crown his own reign by its solution in a way favorable
to Russia. His position was a very strong one. By the Treaty of 1841
his headship as protector of Eastern Christendom had been acknowledged.
Austria was now bound to him irrevocably by the tie of gratitude, and
Prussia by close family ties and by sympathy. It was only necessary to
win over England. In 1853, in a series of private, informal interviews
with the English ambassador, he disclosed his plan that there should be a
confidential understanding between him and Her Majesty's government. He
said in substance: "England and Russia must be friends. Never was the
necessity greater. If we agree, I have no solicitude about Europe. What
others think is really of small consequence. I am as desirous as you for
the continued existence of the Turkish Empire. But we have on our hands
a sick man--a very sick man: he may suddenly die. Is it not the part of
prudence for us to come to an understanding regarding what should be done
in case of such a catastrophe? It may as well be understood at once that
I should never permit an attempt to reconstruct a Byzantine Empire, and
still less should I allow the partition of Turkey into small
republics--ready-made asylums for Kossuths and Mazzinis and European
revolutionists; and I also tell you very frankly that I should never
permit England or any of the Powers to have a foothold in Constantinople.
I am willing to bind myself also not to occupy it--except, perhaps, as a
guardian. But I should have no objection to your occupying Egypt. I
quite understand its importance to your government--and perhaps the
island of Candia might suit you. I see no objection to that island
becoming also an English possession. I do not ask for a treaty--only an
understanding; between gentlemen that is sufficient. I have no desire to
increase my empire. It is large enough; but I repeat--the sick man is
dying; and if we are taken by surprise, if proper precautions are not
taken in advance, circumstances may arise which will make it necessary
for me to occupy Constantinople."
It was a bribe, followed by a threat. England coldly declined entering
into any stipulations without the concurrence of the other Powers. Her
Majesty's government could not be a party to a confidential arrangement
from which it was to derive a benefit. The negotiations had failed.
Nicholas was deeply incensed and disappointed. He could rely, however,
upon Austria and Prussia. He now thought of Louis Napoleon, the new
French Emperor, who was looking for recognition in Europe. The English
ambassador was coldly received, and for the first time since the
abdication of Charles X., the representative of France received a cordial
greeting, and was intrusted with a flattering message to the Emperor.
But France had not forgotten the retreat from Moscow, nor the presence of
Alexander in Paris, nor her attempted ostracism in Europe by Nicholas
himself; and, further, although Louis Napoleon was pleased with the
overtures made to win his friendship, he was not yet quite sure which
cause would best promote his own ends.
Fortunately Russia had a grievance against Turkey. It was a very small
one, but it was useful, and led to one of the most exciting crises in the
history of Europe. It was a question of the possession of the Holy
Shrines at Bethlehem and other places which tradition associates with the
birth and death of Jesus Christ; and whether the Latin or the Greek monks
had the right to the key of the great door of the Church at Bethlehem,
and the right to place a silver star over the grotto where our Saviour
was born. The Sultan had failed to carry out his promises in adjusting
these disputed points. And all Europe trembled when the great Prince
Menschikof, with imposing suite and threatening aspect, appeared at
Constantinople, demanding immediate settlement of the dispute. Turkey
was paralyzed with fright, until England sent her great diplomatist Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe--and France hers, M. de Lacour. No simpler
question was ever submitted to more distinguished consideration or was
watched with more breathless interest by five sovereigns and their
cabinets. In a few days all was settled--the questions of the shrines
and of the possession of the key of the great door of the church at
Bethlehem were happily adjusted. There were only a few "business
details" to arrange, and the episode would be closed. But the trouble
was not over. Hidden away among the "business details" was the germ of a
great war. The Emperor of Russia "felt obliged to demand guarantees,
formal and positive," assuring the security of the Greek Christians in
the Sultan's dominions. He had been constituted the Protector of
Christianity in the Turkish Empire, and demanded this by virtue of that
authority. The Sultan, strengthened now by the presence of the English
and French ambassadors, absolutely refused to give such guarantee,
appealing to the opinion of the world to sustain him in resisting such a
violation of his independence and of his rights. In vain did Lord
Stratford exchange notes and conferences with Count Nesselrode and Prince
Menschikof and the Grand Vizier and exhaust all the arts and powers of
the most skilled diplomacy. In July, 1853, the Russian troops had
invaded Turkish territory, and a French and English fleet soon after had
crossed the Dardanelles,--no longer closed to the enemies of Russia,--had
steamed by Constantinople, and was in the Bosphorus.
Austria joined England and France in a defensive though not an offensive
alliance, and Prussia held entirely aloof from the conflict.
Nicholas had failed in all his calculations. In vain had he tried to
lure England into a secret compact by the offer of Egypt--in vain had he
preserved Hungary to Austria--in vain sought to attach Prussia to himself
by acts of friendship; and his Nemesis was pursuing him, avenging a long
series of affronts to France. Unsupported by a single nation, he was at
war with three; and after a brilliant reign of twenty-eight years
unchecked by a single misfortune, he was about to die, leaving to his
empire the legacy of a disastrous war, which was to end in defeat and
humiliation.
But a strange thing had happened. For a thousand years Europe had been
trying to drive Mohammedanism out of the continent. No sacrifice had
been considered too great if it would help to rid Christendom of that
great iniquity. Now the Turkish Empire,--the spiritual heir and center
of this old enemy,--no less vicious--no less an offense to the instincts
of Christendom than before, was on the brink of extermination. It would
have been a surprise to Richard the lion-hearted, and to Louis IX. the
saint, if they could have foreseen what England and France would do eight
hundred years later when such a crisis arrived! While the Sultan in the
name of the Prophet was appealing to all the passions of a mad fanaticism
to arise and "drive out the foreign infidels who were assailing their
holy faith"--there was in England an enthusiasm for his defense as
splendid as if the cause were a righteous one.
It is not a simple thing to carry a bark deeply loaded with treasure
safely through swift and tortuous currents. England was loaded to the
water's edge with treasure. Her hope was in that sunken wreck of an
empire which fate had moored at the gateway leading to her Eastern
dominions, and what she most feared in this world was its removal. As a
matter of state policy, she may have followed the only course which was
open to her; but viewed from a loftier standpoint, it was a compromise
with unrighteousness when she joined Hands with the "Great Assassin" and
poured out the blood of her sons to keep him unharmed. For fifty years
that compromise has embarrassed her policy, and still continues to soil
her fair name. In the War of the Crimea, England, no less than Russia,
was fighting, not for the avowed, but unavowed object. But frankness is
not one of the virtues required by diplomacy, so perhaps of that we have
no right to complain.
On the 4th of January, 1854, the allied fleets entered the Black Sea.
The Emperor Nicholas, from his palace in St. Petersburg, watched the
progress of events. He saw Menschikof vainly measuring swords with Lord
Raglan at Odessa (April 22); then the overwhelming defeat at the Alma
(September 20); then the sinking of the Russian fleet to protect
Sebastopol, about which the battle was to rage until the end of the war.
He saw the invincible courage of his foe in that immortal act of valor,
the cavalry charge at Balaklava (November 5), in obedience to an order
wise when it was given, but useless and fatal when it was received--of
which someone made the oft-repeated criticism--"_C'est magnifique--mais
ce n'est pas la guerre_." And then he saw the power to endure during
that awful winter, when the elements and official mismanagement were
fighting for him, and when more English troops were perishing from cold
and neglect than had been killed by Russian shot and shell.
But the immense superiority of the armies of the allies could not be
doubted. His troops, vanquished at every point, were hopelessly
beleagured in Sebastopol. The majesty of his empire was on every side
insulted, his ports in every sea blockaded. Never before had he tasted
the bitterness of defeat and humiliation. Europe had bowed down before
him as the Agamemnon among Kings. He had saved Austria; had protected
Prussia; he had made France feel the weight of his august displeasure.
Wherever autocracy had been insulted, there he had been its champion and
striven to be its restorer. But ever since 1848 there had been something
in the air unsuited to his methods. He was the incarnation of an old
principle in a new world. It was time for him to depart. His day had
been a long and splendid one, but it was passing amid clouds and darkness.
A successful autocrat is quite a different person from an unsuccessful
one. Nicholas had been seen in the shining light of invincibility. But
a sudden and terrible awakening had come. The nation, stung by repeated
defeats, was angry. A flood of anonymous literature was scattered
broadcast, arraigning the Emperor--the administration--the ministers--the
diplomats--the generals. "Slaves, arise!" said one, "and stand erect
before the despot. We have been kept long enough in serfage to the
successors of Tatar Khans."
The Tsar grew gloomy and silent. "My successor," he said, "may do what
he likes. I cannot change." When he saw Austria at last actually in
alliance with his enemies he was sorely shaken. But it was the voice of
bitter reproach and hatred from his hitherto silent people which shook
his iron will and broke his heart. He no longer desired to live. While
suffering from an influenza he insisted upon going out in the intense
cold without his greatcoat and reviewing his guards. Five days later he
dictated the dispatch which was sent to every city in Russia: "The
Emperor is dying."