By 9 February the Tsar knew that Orlov had failed in his mission. He had also learned that the Austrians were preparing to send their troops actually into Serbia to prevent its occupation by his troops. So it seems extraordinary that he should reject the one chance he had left – Napoleon’s overture – to avoid a war against the Western powers, a war he must have feared that he would lose, if Austria opposed Russia. It is tempting to believe, as some historians do, that Nicholas had finally lost all sense of proportion, that the tendency to mental disturbance with which he had been born – his impulsiveness and rash behaviour and melancholic irritability – had become mixed with the arrogance acquired by an autocratic ruler after almost thirty years of listening to sycophants.42 In the crisis of 1853–4 he behaved at times like a reckless gambler who overplays his hand: after years of patient play to build up Russia’s position in the Near East, he was risking everything on a war against the Turks, desperately staking his entire winnings on a single turn of the wheel.
But was this really gambling from his point of view? We know from Nicholas’s private writings that he took confidence from comparisons with 1812. He constantly referred to his older brother’s war against Napoleon as a reason why it was possible for Russia to fight alone against the world. ‘If Europe forces me to go to war,’ he wrote in February, ‘I will follow the example of my brother Alexander in 1812, I will venture into uncompromising war against it, I will retreat if necessary to behind the Urals, and will not put down arms as long as the feet of foreign forces trample anywhere on Russian land.’43
This was not a reasoned argument. It was not based on any calculation of the armed forces at his disposal or any careful thought about the practical difficulties the Russians would face in fighting against the superior forces of the European powers, difficulties often pointed out by Menshikov and his other senior commanders, who had warned him several times not to provoke war with Turkey and the Western powers by invading the Danubian principalities. It was a purely emotional reaction, based on the Tsar’s pride and arrogance, on his inflated sense of Russian power and prestige, and perhaps above all on his deeply held belief that he was engaged in a religious war to complete Russia’s providential mission in the world. In all sincerity Nicholas believed that he had been called by God to wage a holy war for the liberation of the Orthodox from Muslim rule, and nothing would divert him from this ‘divine cause’. As he explained to Frederick William, the Prussian king, in March 1854, he was prepared to fight this war alone, against the Western powers, if they sided with the Turks:
Waging war neither for worldly advantages nor for conquests, but for a solely Christian purpose, must I be left alone to fight under the banner of the Holy Cross and to see the others, who call themselves Christians, all unite around the Crescent to combat Christendom? … Nothing is left to me but to fight, to win, or to perish with honour, as a martyr of our holy faith, and when I say this I declare it in the name of all Russia.44
These were not the words of a reckless gambler; they were the calculations of a believer.
Rebuffed by the Tsar, Napoleon had no option but to add his signature to the British ultimatum to the Russians to withdraw from the principalities: for him it was an issue of national honour and prestige. Sent to the Tsar on 27 February, the ultimatum stated that, if he did not reply within six days, a state of war would automatically come into existence between the Western powers and Russia. There was no reference to peace talks any more – no opportunity was given to the Tsar to come back with terms – so the purpose of the ultimatum was clearly to precipitate a war. It was a foregone conclusion that the Tsar would reject the ultimatum – he considered it beneath his dignity even to make a reply – so as soon as they had sent their ultimatum the Western powers were in effect acting as if war had already been declared. By the end of February, troops were being mobilized.
Antoine Cetty, the quartermaster of the French army, wrote to Marshal de Castellane on 24 February:
The Tsar has replied negatively [to Napoleon’s letter]; it only now remains to prepare for war. The Emperor’s thinking was to do everything in his power not to send an expeditionary force to the East, but England carried us away in its headlong rush to war. It was impossible to permit an English flag to hang without our own on the walls of Constantinople. Wherever England treads alone, she rapidly becomes the sole mistress and does not let go of her prey.
This was about the sum of it. At the moment of decision, Napoleon had hesitated over war. But in the end he needed the alliance with the British, and feared losing out in the share-out of the spoils if he did not join them in a war for the defence of Western interests in the Near East. The French Emperor confessed as much in a speech to the Senate and Legislative Assembly on 2 March:
France has as great an interest as England – perhaps a greater interest – to ensure that the influence of Russia does not permanently extend to Constantinople; because to reign at Constantinople means to reign over the Mediterranean; and I think that none of you, gentlemen, will say that only England has vital interests in this sea, which washes three hundred leagues of our shores … . Why are we going to Constantinople? We are going there with England to defend the Sultan’s cause, and no less to protect the right of the Christians; we are going there to defend the freedom of the seas and our rightful influence in the Mediterranean. 45
In fact, it was far from clear what the allies would be fighting for. Like so many wars, the allied expedition to the East began with no one really knowing what it was about. The reasons for the war would take months for the Western powers to work out through long-drawn-out negotiations between themselves and the Austrians during 1854. Even after they had landed in the Crimea, in September, the allies were a long way from agreement about the objectives of the war.
The French and the British had different ideas from the start. During March there was a series of conferences in Paris to discuss their aims and strategy. The French argued for a Danubian campaign as well as a Crimean one. If Austria and Prussia could be persuaded to join the war on the allies’ side, the French favoured a large-scale land offensive in the principalities and southern Russia, combined with an Austrian-Prussian campaign in Poland. But the British mistrusted the Austrians – they thought they were too soft on Russia – and did not want to be committed to an alliance with them which might inhibit their own more ambitious plans against Russia.
The British cabinet was divided over its war aims and strategy. Aberdeen insisted on a limited campaign to restore the sovereignty of Turkey, while Palmerston and his war party argued for a more aggressive offensive to roll back Russian influence in the Near East and bring Russia to its knees. The two sides reached a sort of compromise through the naval strategy drawn up by Sir James Graham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, which had taken shape in reaction to Sinope in December 1853. Graham’s plan was to launch a swift attack on Sevastopol to destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet and seize the Crimea before the opening of the more important spring campaign in the Baltic which would bring British forces to St Petersburg – a strategy developed from plans already made in the event of a war against France (for Sevastopol read Cherbourg).46