Read Online The Crimean War by Orlando Figes - Free Book Online
Authors: Orlando Figes
Tags: General, History, Military, Europe, Other, Crimean War; 1853-1856, Russia & the Former Soviet Union
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Western fears of Russia were intensified by its violent reaction to the revolutions of 1848. In France, where the revolutionary wave began in February with the downfall of the July Monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic, the Left was united by the fear of Russian forces coming to the aid of the counter-revolutionary Right and restoring ‘order’ in Paris. Everybody waited for the Russian invasion. ‘I am learning Russian,’ wrote the playwright Prosper Mérimée to a friend in Italy. ‘Perhaps it will help me to converse with the Cossacks in the Tuileries.’ As democratic revolutions spread through the German and Habsburg lands that spring, it seemed to many (as Napoleon had once said) that either Europe would become republican, or it would be overrun by the Cossacks. The Continental revolutions appeared destined for a life-or-death struggle against Russia and Tsar Nicholas, the ‘gendarme of Europe’. In Germany, the newly elected deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly, the first German parliament, appealed for a union with France and for the creation of a European army to defend the Continent against a Russian invasion. 36
For the Germans and the French, Poland was the first line of defence against Russia. Throughout the spring of 1848, there were declarations of support and calls for a war for the restoration of an independent Poland in the National Assembly in Paris. On 15 May the Assembly was invaded by a crowd of demonstrators angry at the rumours (which were true) that Alphonse de Lamartine, the Foreign Minister, had reached an understanding with the Russians over Poland. To cries of ‘Vive la Pologne!’ from the crowd, radical deputies took turns to declare their passionate support for a war of liberation to restore Poland to her pre-partition frontiers and expel the Russians from all Polish soil. 37
Then, in July, the Russians moved against the Romanian revolution in Moldavia and Wallachia, which further inflamed the West. The revolution in the principalities had been anti-Russian from the start. Romanian liberals and nationalists were opposed to the Russiandominated administration that had been left in place by the departing tsarist troops following their occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1829–34. The liberal opposition was first centred in the boyar assemblies whose political rights had been severely limited by the Règlement organique imposed by the Russians before handing back the principalities to the sovereignty of the Ottomans. The rulers of the principalities, for instance, were no longer elected by the assemblies, but appointed by the Tsar. During the 1840s, when moderate leaders like Ion Campineanu were in exile, the national movement passed into the hands of a younger generation of activists – many of them boyar sons educated in Paris – who organized themselves in secret revolutionary societies along the lines of the Carbonari and the Jacobins.
It was the largest of these secret societies, the Fratja or ‘Brotherhood’, that burst onto the scene in the spring of 1848. In Bucharest and Iai there were public meetings calling for the restoration of old rights annulled by the Règlement organique . Revolutionary committees were formed. In Bucharest, huge demonstrations organized by the Fratja forced Prince Gheorghe Bibescu to abdicate in favour of a provisional government. A republic was declared and a liberal constitution promulgated to replace the Règlement organique . The Russian consul fled to Austrian Transylvania. The Romanian tricolour was paraded through the streets of Bucharest by cheering crowds, whose leaders called for the union of the principalities as an independent national state.
Alarmed by these developments, and fearing that the spirit of rebellion might spread to their own territories, in July the Russians occupied Moldavia with 14,000 troops to prevent the establishment of a revolutionary government like the one in Bucharest.
Western fears of Russia were intensified by its violent reaction to the revolutions of 1848. In France, where the revolutionary wave began in February with the downfall of the July Monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic, the Left was united by the fear of Russian forces coming to the aid of the counter-revolutionary Right and restoring ‘order’ in Paris. Everybody waited for the Russian invasion. ‘I am learning Russian,’ wrote the playwright Prosper Mérimée to a friend in Italy. ‘Perhaps it will help me to converse with the Cossacks in the Tuileries.’ As democratic revolutions spread through the German and Habsburg lands that spring, it seemed to many (as Napoleon had once said) that either Europe would become republican, or it would be overrun by the Cossacks. The Continental revolutions appeared destined for a life-or-death struggle against Russia and Tsar Nicholas, the ‘gendarme of Europe’. In Germany, the newly elected deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly, the first German parliament, appealed for a union with France and for the creation of a European army to defend the Continent against a Russian invasion. 36
For the Germans and the French, Poland was the first line of defence against Russia. Throughout the spring of 1848, there were declarations of support and calls for a war for the restoration of an independent Poland in the National Assembly in Paris. On 15 May the Assembly was invaded by a crowd of demonstrators angry at the rumours (which were true) that Alphonse de Lamartine, the Foreign Minister, had reached an understanding with the Russians over Poland. To cries of ‘Vive la Pologne!’ from the crowd, radical deputies took turns to declare their passionate support for a war of liberation to restore Poland to her pre-partition frontiers and expel the Russians from all Polish soil. 37
Then, in July, the Russians moved against the Romanian revolution in Moldavia and Wallachia, which further inflamed the West. The revolution in the principalities had been anti-Russian from the start. Romanian liberals and nationalists were opposed to the Russiandominated administration that had been left in place by the departing tsarist troops following their occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1829–34. The liberal opposition was first centred in the boyar assemblies whose political rights had been severely limited by the Règlement organique imposed by the Russians before handing back the principalities to the sovereignty of the Ottomans. The rulers of the principalities, for instance, were no longer elected by the assemblies, but appointed by the Tsar. During the 1840s, when moderate leaders like Ion Campineanu were in exile, the national movement passed into the hands of a younger generation of activists – many of them boyar sons educated in Paris – who organized themselves in secret revolutionary societies along the lines of the Carbonari and the Jacobins.
It was the largest of these secret societies, the Fratja or ‘Brotherhood’, that burst onto the scene in the spring of 1848. In Bucharest and Iai there were public meetings calling for the restoration of old rights annulled by the Règlement organique . Revolutionary committees were formed. In Bucharest, huge demonstrations organized by the Fratja forced Prince Gheorghe Bibescu to abdicate in favour of a provisional government. A republic was declared and a liberal constitution promulgated to replace the Règlement organique . The Russian consul fled to Austrian Transylvania. The Romanian tricolour was paraded through the streets of Bucharest by cheering crowds, whose leaders called for the union of the principalities as an independent national state.
Alarmed by these developments, and fearing that the spirit of rebellion might spread to their own territories, in July the Russians occupied Moldavia with 14,000 troops to prevent the establishment of a revolutionary government like the one in Bucharest.
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