On 4 April 1826 Britain and Russia, as we have seen, had signed the Protocol of St Petersburg, which stated the intention of the two powers to offer mediation to the Turks and Greeks, to intervene if mediation failed, and to invite Austria, France and Prussia to join them in this endeavour. Metternich for Austria was strongly against the proposal; it gave recognition to rebels and would, he believed, be impossible to execute without war. But Austria delayed outright rejection, and instead tried to sink the plan by putting forward confusing counter-proposals. ‘The thicker the shadows,’ wrote Austria’s foreign minister, ‘the sooner these mediators without a mandate will bang their heads.’1 Prussia followed Austria’s lead, so Canning concentrated on winning over France.
Philhellenism in France had waned after the early departures from Marseille of enthusiastic idealists to join the Greek cause, but the death of Byron in 1824 gave it enormous renewed impetus. The French government however was much more ambivalent than the public. France was intent on extending her influence in the Middle East generally and in Egypt especially. This sprang in part from an ambition to match Britain’s position in India, and in part from a determination to balance any Russian expansion southward and stop it going too far. France had already helped Mehmed Ali revitalise Egypt by sending technical and military advisers. At Mehmed’s request in November 1824 a further military mission of two French generals and six other officers left for Egypt, but in secrecy. In the following April the French government, after much debate, agreed to build for Egypt two frigates and a brig of war at Marseille, again in as much secrecy as could be contrived.
If France was to build up her influence in the Middle East and block Russian and British ambitions, where better than in Greece itself? Hence another initiative, again sub rosa, to place a French king on the throne of an independent Greece. The French candidate was the Duke of Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, the man who was to become king of France in 1830 and whose descendants still lay claim to a restored French throne. In April 1825 the Orléanist General Roche arrived in Navplion to promote the candidacy of Nemours, with the connivance though not the open support of some members of the French government. But Roche was not the only hawker of kingly wares; the so-called English party was at the same time preparing an approach to Britain inviting either Leopold of Saxe-Coburg or the Duke of Sussex to the Greek throne. Roche’s mission was effectively ended by the widely supported Greek Act of Submission to England in the summer of 1825.
By the beginning of 1826 therefore France’s efforts to extend her influence by acting independently, and largely clandestinely, had come to nothing. In Egypt the French had done a great deal to help Mehmed Ali, but there was no indication that he was prepared to do anything for them. The prospect of a French king for Greece was dead. France was thus now willing to consider joint action on Greece with Russia and Britain, on the lines of the St Petersburg Protocol of April 1826.
Canning formally communicated the text of the St Petersburg Protocol to France on 10 August 1826, though its contents were already well known since it had been leaked to and published in The Times in May. Canning followed this up by a six-week visit to Paris in September and October, ostensibly on a private visit. There he found the French King Charles X keen to co-operate, and forged a close bond of friendship with him; Canning was the only commoner ever to be invited to dine en famille with Charles X at the Tuileries. In essence, France was willing to sign a treaty based on the protocol in order to check both England and Russia, just as a year earlier England had signed the protocol as a block to Russia.
The text of a treaty now had to be agreed between the three powers, which was no easy matter, and for the next nine months after Canning’s visit to Paris drafts were circulated between the three capitals. Another cause of delay was that Greece was not Canning’s only concern as foreign secretary or even the major one. At the end of the year Portugal claimed centre stage. There the government of the Constitutional party, backed by England, was under threat from the Absolutists, who were supported by Spain and France. At the end of November 1826 Portuguese anti-government forces crossed the frontier from Spain and marched on Lisbon, and the Portuguese prime minister called on Britain for military support. On 12 December Canning promised it during a dramatic debate in Parliament. This was the speech in which he famously claimed that, by recognising the independence of Spain’s former South American colonies and so weakening Spain, ‘I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.’ British troops reached Lisbon on Christmas Day, France and Spain withdrew support from the invaders, and they were driven back by the Portuguese army without the British having to fire a shot. ‘By a display of oratory and a military parade,’ wrote a later historian, ‘Canning had imposed his will on Western Europe.’2 This happy outcome had a bearing on the Greek question: it encouraged the belief that force had only to be paraded, not used. It was a hopeful precedent for intervention in Greece, but as it turned out a misleading one.
Moves towards a tripartite treaty were further slowed down by an upheaval in the British cabinet. In February 1827 the prime minister Lord Liverpool fell ill and had to resign, and after prolonged political manoeuvring Canning, strongly supported by the King, became prime minister on 10 April. Wellington’s opposition to the St Petersburg Protocol had steadily increased, even though it was he who had signed it for Britain, as he had come to doubt the wisdom of intervention; he therefore resigned from the cabinet and from his post as commander-in-chief of the army. Canning’s friend Lord Dudley became foreign secretary, and Canning also had the support of the King’s brother the Duke of Clarence, later William IV, who was appointed to the revived office of Lord High Admiral. Canning’s political position at home was thus much strengthened in the months leading to the signing of the Treaty of London by representatives of Britain, Russia and France on 6 July 1827.
This treaty contained seven open articles and a further three secret articles. The open articles closely followed the St Petersburg Protocol of the year before, proposing limited autonomy for Greece as a tribute-paying dependency of Turkey. There were only two significant changes in the open articles: none of the powers was required to guarantee anything, and there was now no question of any power acting alone. But the secret articles set out what the three signatory powers would now do. They would establish commercial relations with Greece, thus in effect recognising her independent status. If within a month (later shortened to a fortnight by Canning) Turkey, Greece or both had not accepted an armistice, the powers would intervene. Their admirals would be given instructions on how to impose the armistice. If this failed the representatives of the powers in London would take further as yet unspecified steps, using ‘les moyens ultérieurs dont l’emploi pourrait devenir nécessaire’.3 These secret articles did not stay secret for long, as they too were published in The Times along with the rest of the treaty a week after its signature. The Greeks were therefore delighted to see that provided Turkey rejected the armistice, as was virtually certain, Britain, Russia and France would intervene. In Corfu, wrote Kapodhístrias’ brother Viaro, ‘men went mad with joy. The bells were rung, the Christians gave thanks to God, old men danced … a day of resurrection.’4
While the details of the Treaty of London were being hammered out, another set of negotiations was going on which could, if successful, have transformed the situation in Greece. This was an attempt to detach Mehmed Ali, viceroy of Egypt and father of Ibrahim, from his allegiance to the Sultan. Back in June 1826 Stratford Canning, then the British envoy in St Petersburg, had asked his cousin George Canning if it would be possible ‘to enlist the Viceroy of Egypt … by holding out to him the prospect of a pashalik in Syria’.5 On Stratford Canning’s initiative the British consul in Alexandria began discussions with Mehmed Ali in September, and learnt that Mehmed was tired of the war in Greece, had purposely told his son to ‘loiter about in the interior’ of the Peloponnese, and was ready to withdraw from it if Britain would give him open support to ‘aggrandise himself towards Arabia’.6
However no such open support was forthcoming, and in the following months Mehmed Ali changed tack and took steps to strengthen his position as an ally of the Sultan. During the winter of 1826–7 he threatened to pull out of Greece altogether unless his demands were met, the demands being the replacement of the Turkish kapitan pasha Khosref, whom he accused of gross incompetence in the siege of Mesolongi, and the appointment of himself as generalissimo of all Ottoman land and sea forces in Greece, Turkish as well as Egyptian. The Sultan conceded – he had little choice – and Mehmed Ali began active preparation of his fleet for a new expedition to Greece, with the aim of seizing Hydra and Spétses and so eliminating Greece’s naval power. He raised the best part of 15,000 new troops. His ships practised manoeuvres under the supervision of French officers, and from March onwards the ships built for him in France began to arrive. Thus while French statesmen were preparing to sign the Treaty of London to drive Mehmed Ali’s forces out of Greece, French officers and shipyards were working to make his intervention in Greece a success.
By June 1827 Mehmed Ali’s fleet was fully prepared. It was then that Cochrane, seeking the success as Greece’s naval commander that had so far eluded him, brought a Greek fleet to Alexandria in an attempt to destroy the Egyptian fleet, as Kanáris had tried to do two years earlier. Cochrane’s ships anchored outside the harbour, and eight fireships were ordered in but only two obeyed, which could do no more than burn one stranded Egyptian vessel. Light winds made it impossible for Cochrane’s fleet to enter the harbour, and for two days it lay outside, drifting apart over a distance of twenty miles, before withdrawing back to Greece. If Cochrane had succeeded it might have been he with a Greek fleet and not Codrington with a foreign one who was credited with securing Greece’s independence. As it was, Cochrane’s attack, even though it failed, demonstrated to Mehmed Ali that he was in danger from Greek ships even in his own harbour, and encouraged him to believe that the Greek situation must be resolved, the sooner the better.
A final attempt to neutralise Mehmed Ali was made in the summer of 1827 by George Canning, now prime minister. At his instigation Major Cradock, an official at the British embassy in Paris, went to Alexandria with instructions to warn Mehmed Ali of the danger of involvement in a conflict between Turkey and the allied powers which might well ‘produce some hostile collision in spite of [the powers’] earnest and anxious desire to avoid it’.7 Canning had high hopes of Cradock’s mission. ‘If the Pasha’s fleet has not sailed before Cradock reaches him,’ he wrote, ‘I flatter myself it will remain in port.’8 But when Cradock reached Alexandria on 8 August he was just too late: the fleet had sailed three days earlier. On the same date, 8 August, George Canning, exhausted by the burden of office, died at the age of fifty-seven. ‘We have just lost Canning,’ wrote Princess de Lieven. ‘The Mercantile class is in dismay, the people in tears, everybody who is not Metternich is in despair.’9 So Canning never saw the outcome of the grand scheme of allied intervention in Greece of which he was the prime architect.
The Treaty of London had set the allied and Ottoman naval forces on a potential collision course. At Alexandria the fleet which Mehmed Ali was preparing had been joined by Egyptian ships brought back from the Peloponnese, by a Turkish contingent from Constantinople under Tahir Pasha, and by four Tunisian ships. Ibrahim’s brother-in-law Moharrem Bey commanded the Egyptian vessels. The fleet left Alexandria in early August 1827 and consisted of three ships of the line, all Turkish; some sixty other fighting ships, five of the finest having been built in France; forty transports to convey the newly raised troops; and six fireships, one of which was to spark the inferno of Navarino. The fleet carried some 3,500 guns and was manned by over 30,000 sailors. Mehmed Ali was jubilantly proud of it. ‘It is not the sort of fleet you have seen hitherto,’ he wrote to Ibrahim. ‘It is now a brilliant fleet, in modern style, and such as has never been seen before in the Muslim world.’10 Mehmed Ali wanted to command the fleet in person, but this was forbidden by the Porte. Ibrahim was therefore in overall command of both the fleet and the land forces in the Peloponnese, and it was with Ibrahim that the allied admirals had to deal.
The three allied admirals were Sir Edward Codrington for Britain, Count de Rigny for France, and Count Heiden for Russia. Codrington had spent his life in the navy, as a lieutenant in the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794, as captain of the Orion at Trafalgar in 1805, and from the spring of 1827 as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean station. He was a fine naval commander, careful in planning, fearless in action, devoted to his officers and men, as they were to him, and prepared to clash with the highest authority to defend their interests. He also showed considerable diplomatic skills in winning the co-operation of his fellow admirals, with both of whose countries Britain had been at war in the previous twenty years.
The French admiral de Rigny had five years more experience of the eastern Mediterranean than Codrington, and had already been involved in the tortuous politics of the region, most recently when he negotiated the controversial surrender of the Athens Akropolis to the Turks in the summer of 1827. Codrington was at first extremely wary of de Rigny, finding in him ‘a rooted dislike to the Greeks and a leaning towards the Egyptians with whom he had long been in friendly intercourse’. But Codrington won him over. ‘In order to ensure his yielding to me whatever I considered essential,’ he wrote, ‘I embraced every opportunity of giving way to him in matters of minor importance.’ Heiden, the Dutch-born admiral of the Russian fleet, was quite different. Codrington ‘saw at once that the Count was a plain sailing open-hearted man’ who was ‘as ready in every instance to meet my wishes as if he had been an officer of our own Navy’.11 Codrington had not been formally given the position of senior admiral, but de Rigny, much younger, and Heiden, with much less experience of the Mediterranean, accorded him the position without question.
Co-operation between the allies was the more important because they were heavily outnumbered by their opponents. The allies had only twenty-eight fighting ships, less than half as many as the Turko-Egyptian fleet, and only a third of the Ottoman numbers of men and guns. In the allies’ favour, however, was their preponderance in ships of the line, the largest fighting ships, of which they had ten against their opponents’ three. Their seamanship was also superior, and Ibrahim consistently referred to the allied fleet as more powerful than his own.
Once the Treaty of London was signed, instructions were sent to the three powers’ admirals in the Mediterranean and to their ambassadors in Constantinople. The ambassadors were to present the terms of the treaty to the Ottoman Porte, which they did on 16 August, and the admirals to present them to the Greeks, which they did at the end of the month. The instructions then considered the likely results and laid down what was to be done next. The most probable outcome was that the Greeks would accept the armistice, as they did on 2 September, and more or less keep it, while the Turks rejected it, as they did with increasing vehemence to the allied ambassadors during August and September. In that case the admirals were ‘to intercept every supply sent by sea of men, arms, etc., destined against Greece’ though force must not be used ‘unless the Turks persist in forcing the passage’. At the same time the admirals were told that such interception ‘requires the greatest caution’ and that ‘you ought to be most particularly careful that the measures you adopt … do not degenerate into hostilities’.12
These instructions were hopelessly inadequate. If carried out as they stood, they would only prevent Ibrahim being reinforced, and would leave him free to use the forces he already had in the Peloponnese in any way he chose, including the long-contemplated attack on Hydra. Even the interruption of reinforcements was paradoxically to be achieved by the use of force if necessary but without hostilities. Codrington therefore sought clarification, as instructed, from Britain’s Constantinople ambassador, now Stratford Canning, recently transferred from St Petersburg. Codrington could get an answer from Constantinople in a week, especially if he was off the Turkish coast, whereas an answer from London would take a month or more.
Formal elucidation for the admirals jointly came in a document signed by all three allied ambassadors in Constantinople, known as the Protocol of 4 September. The protocol first made clear that even neutral vessels bringing ‘succours destined for the Turks into Greece’ were to be intercepted. It then went on to extend considerably the original instructions. The allied fleet was to protect, in co-operation with the Greeks, all that part of Greece which had ‘taken an active and continued part in the insurrection’. This area was defined, generously for the Greeks, as the territory south of a line from Vólos in the east to just north of Mesolongi in the west, including the neighbouring islands; so the whole Peloponnese was covered, plus Athens and Mesolongi, and the islands of Évvia, Hydra and Spétses. The protocol had two more new elements. All Turkish and Egyptian fighting ships were to be ‘encouraged’ to return to Constantinople or Alexandria, as were transports carrying troops; and any Ottoman ships which persisted in staying at Navarino or Methóni must ‘incur all the chances of war’.13 In two personal letters to Codrington, Stratford Canning was even more explicit. On 19 August he told Codrington ‘to keep the peace with your speaking trumpet if possible; but, in case of necessity, with that which is used for the maintenance of a blockade against friends as well as foes; – I mean force.’ In the second letter of 1 September he wrote that Codrington’s orders were ‘ultimately to be enforced, if necessary, and when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot’.14 Codrington seemed finally to have been given a fairly clear outline of his task, and a completely clear instruction to use force if he had to in carrying it out.