During his stay in England the Tsar had a number of political discussions with the Queen and Prince Albert, with Peel and Aberdeen. The British were surprised by the frankness of his views. The Queen even thought he was ‘too frank, for he talks so openly before people, which he should not do, and with difficulty restrains himself’, as she wrote to Leopold. The Tsar had come to the conclusion that openness was the only way to overcome British mistrust and prejudice against Russia. ‘I know that I am taken for an actor,’ he told Peel and Aberdeen, ‘but indeed I am not; I am thoroughly straightforward; I say what I mean, and what I promise I fulfil.’9
On the question of Belgium, the Tsar declared that he would like to mend his relations with Leopold, but ‘while there are Polish officers in the service of the king, that is completely impossible’. Exchanging views with Aberdeen, ‘not as an emperor with a minister, but as two gentlemen’, he explained his thinking, voicing his resentment of Western double standards against Russia:
The Poles were and still remain in rebellion against my rule. Would it be acceptable for a gentleman to take into service people who are guilty of rebellion against his friend? Leopold took these rebels under his protection. What would you say if I became the patron of [the Irish independence leader Daniel] O’Connell and thought of making him my minister?
When it came to France, Nicholas wanted Britain to join Russia in a policy of containment. Appealing to their mistrust of the French after the Napoleonic Wars, he told Peel and Aberdeen that France ‘should never be allowed again to create disorder and march its armies beyond its borders’. He hoped that with their common interests against France, Britain and Russia might become allies. ‘Through our friendly intercourse,’ he said with feeling, ‘I hope to annihilate the prejudices between our countries. For I value highly the opinion of Englishmen. As to what the French say of me, I care not. I spit on it.’10
Nicholas particularly played on Britain’s fear of France in the Middle East – the main subject of his talks with Peel and Aberdeen. ‘Turkey is a dying man,’ he told them.
We may endeavour to keep him alive, but we shall not succeed. He will, he must, die. That will be a critical moment. I foresee that I shall have to put my armies into motion and Austria must do the same. In this crisis I fear only France. What does she want? I expect her to make a move in many places: in Egypt, in the Mediterranean, and in the East. Remember the French expedition to Ancona [in 1832]? Why could they not undertake the same in Crete or Smyrna? And if they did wouldn’t the English mobilize their fleet? And so in these territories there would be the Russian and the Austrian armies, and all the ships of the English fleet. A major conflagration would become unavoidable.
The Tsar argued that the time had come for the European powers, led by Russia and Britain, to step in and manage a partition of the Turkish territories to avoid a chaotic scramble over their division, possibly involving national revolutions and a Continental war, when the Sultan’s empire finally collapsed. He impressed on Peel and Aberdeen his firm conviction that the Ottoman Empire would soon cave in and that Russia and Britain should act together to plan for that eventuality, if only to prevent the French from taking over Egypt and the eastern Mediterannean, a concern uppermost in British thinking at that time. As Nicholas told Peel,
I do not claim one inch of Turkish soil, but neither will I allow that any other, especially the French, shall have an inch of it … . We cannot now stipulate as to what shall be done with Turkey when she is dead. Such stipulations would only hasten her death. I shall therefore do all in my power to maintain the status quo. But we should keep the possible and eventual case of her collapse honestly and reasonably before our eyes. We ought to deliberate reasonably, and endeavour to come to a straightforward and honest understanding on the subject.11
Peel and Aberdeen were ready to agree on the need to plan ahead for the possible partition of the Ottoman Empire, but only when that need arose, and they did not see that yet. A secret memorandum containing the conclusions of the conversations was drafted by Brunov and agreed (though not signed) by Nicholas and Aberdeen.
The Tsar left England with the firm conviction that the conversations he had held with Peel and Aberdeen were statements of policy, and that he could now look forward to a partnership with Britain the aim of which was to devise a coordinated plan for the partition of the Ottoman Empire whenever that should become necessary to safeguard the interests of the two powers. It was not an unreasonable assumption to make, given that he had a secret memorandum to show for his efforts in London. But in fact it was a fatal error for Nicholas to think that he had a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with the British government on the Eastern Question. The British saw the conversations as no more than an exchange of opinions on matters of concern to both powers and not as something binding in any formal sense. Convinced that all that mattered was the viewpoint of the Queen and her senior ministers, Nicholas failed to appreciate the influence of Parliament, opposition parties, public opinion and the press on the foreign policy of the British government. This misunderstanding was to play a crucial role in the diplomatic blunders made by Nicholas on the eve of the Crimean War.
The Tsar’s visit to London did nothing to dispel the British mistrust of Russia that had been building for decades. Despite the fact that the threat of Russia to British interests was minimal, and trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries were not bad at all in the years leading up to the Crimean War, Russophobia (even more than Francophobia) was arguably the most important element in Britain’s outlook on the world abroad. Throughout Europe, attitudes to Russia were mostly formed by fears and fantasies, and Britain in this sense was no exception to the rule. The rapid territorial expansion of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century and the demonstration of its military might against Napoleon had left a deep impression on the European mind. In the early nineteenth century there was a frenzy of European publications – pamphlets, travelogues and political treatises – on ‘the Russian menace’ to the Continent. They had as much to do with the imagination of an Asiatic ‘other’ threatening the liberties and civilization of Europe as with any real or perceived threat. The stereotype of Russia that emerged from these fanciful writings was that of a savage power, aggressive and expansionist by nature, yet also sufficiently cunning and deceptive to plot with ‘unseen forces’ against the West and infiltrate societies.e
The documentary basis of this ‘Russian menace’ was the so-called ‘Testament of Peter the Great’, which was widely cited by Russophobic writers, politicians, diplomats and military men as prima facie evidence of Russia’s ambitions to dominate the world. Peter’s aims for Russia in this document were megalomaniac: to expand on the Baltic and Black seas, to ally with the Austrians to expel the Turks from Europe, to ‘conquer the Levant’ and control the trade of the Indies, to sow dissent and confusion in Europe and become the master of the European continent.
The ‘Testament’ was a forgery. It was created sometime in the early eighteenth century by various Polish, Hungarian and Ukrainian figures connected to France and the Ottomans, and it went through several drafts before the finished version ended up in the French Foreign Ministry archives during the 1760s. For reasons of foreign policy, the French were disposed to believe in the authenticity of the ‘Testament’: their main allies in Eastern Europe (Sweden, Poland and Turkey) had all been weakened by Russia. The belief that the ‘Testament’ reflected Russia’s aims formed the basis of France’s foreign policy throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.12