France was determined on peace; and whatever Palmerston in his jaunty mood may say, we could not have made war alone, for we would have had all of Europe against us at once, and the United States would soon have followed in their train.
The Earl of Clarendon to Lord Granville, 12 March 1856
In the lull before the conference, or Congress as the French chose to call the proceedings in Paris, each country selected its plenipotentiaries. Britain would be represented by Clarendon and Cowley, France by Walewski and Bourqueny, Russia by Orlov and Brunnov, Austria by Buol and Hübner, Turkey by Aali Pasha and Mehemed Djemil Bey, and Sardinia by Count Cavour and the Marquis de Villamarina. Each team had its own strengths and weaknesses and, as had been the case in Vienna the previous year, each would find itself having to listen to differing instructions from their governments at home. Clarendon and Cowley were united by distrust of any French politician other than the emperor and by a determination to stand firm against Russia. Orlov was anxious to protect Russia from humiliating terms and thought to do that by attempting to drive a wedge between Britain and France. As for Buol, although he received a standing ovation on his arrival in Paris, his role became less significant as the conference proceeded.
The leading personality by far was Clarendon. He might not have been a Castlereagh but he was certainly his own man. Not only did he enjoy the confidence of the French emperor but he was respected by Orlov whom he had first met while a young diplomat in St Petersburg. An aristocrat who was on personal terms with many of Europe’s Royal houses, Clarendon possessed a charm of manner and a finesse which put the other negotiators at ease and which placed him and Cowley in a superior position throughout the negotiations. However, beneath the social allure there lurked a steely determination to get Britain’s way, whatever the cost, and to brush aside the wishes of others. Sincere in his dealings he might have been, but this did not mean that he was prepared to surrender ground: ten days into the conference he was able to tell Palmerston that ‘he had never on any occasion or on any point yielded anything’.1
In this respect he was given able support by the British prime minister. Palmerston involved himself in all of the proceedings and proved to be as much an architect of the treaty as any of the representatives in Paris. In fact, so closely did Palmerston follow the proceedings that he sent daily despatches, frequently reinforced by telegrams, giving precise instructions to the British plenipotentiaries. Many were violently anti-Russian in tone and this proclivity helped to reinforce Orlov’s belief that Palmerston had not changed since the days of Don Pacifico when British interests were best served by the despatch of a gunboat.
Here the Russian minister was mistaken. Because Palmerston could often be all bluster while Clarendon retained a polish which fascinated his colleagues it would be convenient to characterise the British prime minister as an avenging angel. In fact both men were united in their determination to protect British interests and from their correspondence a vivid picture emerges of the events in Paris. The letters also reveal much about their authors: Palmerston showed a grasp of the diplomatic technicalities which belies his reputation as a bully, while Clarendon demonstrated that he could be as much of a scold as the next man. For example, as the congress proceeded he was soon to change his tune about Napoleon. As the French emperor wavered in his support for his ally and allowed himself to be swayed by the Russians, Clarendon began to lose all his respect for him. At the time he kept his feelings to himself but later he admitted to Stratford that he found Napoleon to be ‘ignorant and indolent’, a man ‘so weak that he might just as well be dishonest’.2
Clarendon arrived in Paris on 16 February and immediately plunged himself into a series of courtesy meetings with the emperor, Walewski and Brunnov. These were supposed to prepare the ground for the preliminary meetings which began on 21 February but Clarendon lost little time in reminding his colleagues that Britain would not agree to peace unless all their conditions were met and that, if they were not, preparations were already in hand ‘to prosecute the war with vigour’. The following day saw the arrival of Orlov. The Russian delegation’s instructions were quite simple: to save their country from mortification and through Walewski to work on the emperor. As for the British conditions, Orlov had been ordered by Nesselrode to concede the proposal for the Aaland islands, provided that they were the subject of a separate treaty, and to oppose whatever he could of their other demands. Although in his seventies, Orlov proved to be a tough and durable negotiator – he had once saved Nicholas I by felling a would-be assassin with his fist – and Clarendon was right to accord him respect. When the two men met for the first time on 25 February Clarendon reported that they ‘met as old friends’, the atmosphere being cordial enough for the Russian minister to reveal his astonishment that the allies had not taken Sevastopol after the Battle of the Alma:
Throughout the conversation which lasted upward of an hour the tone of Count Orloff [sic] was moderate and becoming – he expressed no fear and made no boast – he said his object was to put an end to the war and he should regret sincerely if his mission were to fail as he was prepared to make such concessions as were not inconsistent with the dignity of Russia, but the impression left upon my mind was that Count Orloff will be unbending with respect to various points upon which it will be the duty of Lord Cowley and myself to insist and that the successful issue of the negotiations will mainly depend upon the amount of support we shall receive from our colleagues.3
It was a shrewd summary of the events which were to follow. Russia did prove to be obdurate on some points, namely the secession of the Bessarabian territory, and France was less forceful in Britain’s support than Clarendon might have wished. The scene had already been set in the meeting with Brunnov on 18 February when the Russian ambassador argued that Russia should receive something in return for Kars, to which Clarendon responded that it was not negotiable as the whole point of the war had been the necessity of preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. These territorial squabbles were destined to shape the first session of the congress which opened officially on 25 February 1856 at one o’clock in the afternoon in the impressive surroundings of the Quai d’Orsay. It settled the terms of the armistice which would last until 31 March and Clarendon noted with prim approval that Walewski had passed muster as a chairman. At the same time he told Palmerston that Brunnov ‘means to be very troublesome’ and in that respect his early suspicions about the Russians were not far off the mark.
At the second session the following day Orlov set out Russia’s stall by agreeing, in a separate treaty, to leave Bomarsund unfortified on condition that the Bessarabian territorial demands be dropped in exchange for Kars. This was the first crisis of the congress and it was only settled by British firmness and a belated decision to compromise over the exact boundaries of the Bessarabian territory – as Napoleon told Clarendon on 28 February, the terms of Point One of the Austrian ultimatum were ‘not a matter to justify the renewal of the war’. Clarendon had become uncomfortably aware of the strength of French opposition to the war and during his private audiences with the emperor he soon found himself sympathising with the general mood. At home in London Palmerston might preach resolution but in Paris Clarendon was beginning to see that, on the matter of Bessarabia, the allies might have to give ground:
The state of things which I predicted to Your Lordship [Palmerston] has arrived. If we continue to demand that which Russia is now certain to refuse we shall stand alone in the Conference, and the Emperor’s manners last night left me in no doubt that there were in his mind mingled feelings of surprise, regret and vexation, at what he thinks is our exigency, but which he will soon consider to be our obstinacy.4
Obviously something had to give and it was Kars which produced the solution. While Clarendon insisted that it should not be a bargaining counter, Orlov felt differently and he used its capture by Muraviev to good advantage. The deal was never specifically stated in any congress document but before the decisive seventh session on 10 March it had been agreed that Russia would return Kars without compensation and that in return there would be a reduction of the territorial demands in Bessarabia. The mouth of the Danube would be ceded but two-thirds of the land specified in the Austrian ultimatum were allowed to remain in Russian hands. On balance, this was a victory for the allies as the question of Kars had been settled in their favour and despite yielding territory to the Russians, the strategically important mouth of the Danube had been retained. Clarendon was well pleased with the outcome, writing that evening that Orlov had been ‘straightforward and gentlemanlike’ while Brunnov had acted ‘like a low attorney’ whom Orlov treated ‘like his footman’.
The second territorial question involved the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia into the single state of Romania. This was a project close to Napoleon’s heart. Not only did he believe it to be a buffer to future Russian territorial expansion, but he also had hopes that this mainly Latin state would be friendly to France. However, he was opposed by the Austrians and the Turks who feared that any awakening of national sentiment would upset regional stability in the Balkans. Even if the new state remained under Ottoman suzerainty its creation would encourage other nationalities to seek their independence or to combine against Ottoman rule. With Britain’s support – Clarendon reiterated his argument that the war had been fought to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire – this view prevailed and it was agreed that Moldavia and Wallachia, together with Serbia, should remain under Ottoman suzerainty while their privileges would be guaranteed by the signatories to the treaty. The two principalities were allowed to have independent national administrations, and within three years these assemblies were united under a common ruler, Colonel Alexander Cuza.
The next crisis arrived with the discussion of the Third Point, the question of the neutralisation of the Black Sea and the size of the ships to be allowed to remain there. Although the subject was discussed amicably enough at the fourth session on 4 March it quickly degenerated into a struggle over the size of police boats and what constituted naval arsenals and shipyards. Technically, this was a matter for Russia and Turkey to decide but much more was at stake. Russian pride was involved; the Black Sea was regarded as their territorial waters and any attempt to impose naval sanctions was considered an insult to the country’s integrity. With tacit French support, Orlov fought a successful rearguard action to preserve the shipyards at Kershon and Nikolayev, the main bases, respectively, at the mouths of the Dnieper and Bug rivers, but he did not get everything his own way. The Sea of Azov, too, was excluded from the neutralisation of the Black Sea but, even so, the decision to exclude a Russian naval fleet from the Black Sea under Article XI of the treaty was a painful defeat for Orlov. Clarendon certainly thought so. Following the decisive meeting on 10 March he told Palmerston: ‘We have made great progress today and peace may almost be looked upon as a fait accompli.’5
As the conference proceeded many of the most crucial decisions were being taken outside the formal sessions and here Napoleon proved to be a catalyst, talking late into the night at the Tuileries with each of the plenipotentiaries, sometimes in private, at other times ostentatiously making sure that the delegates saw who was receiving his patronage. ‘In the midst of a crowded Assembly,’ reported Clarendon at the end of the first day’s session, ‘I can have no doubt that he [Napoleon] wished publicly [to show] his feeling in favour of the English alliance … it has not been without its effect on the Russian plenipotentiaries.’6 Gratified though Clarendon was to be so favoured, Napoleon was also talking to Orlov who fully repaid Nesselrode’s instructions to flatter the emperor into taking a pro-Russian stance.
One fruit of the Russian plenipotentary’s hard work was the French withdrawal of support for Britain’s more extreme demands for Russia’s Caucasus provinces, namely the granting of independence to Georgia and Circassia. So terrified was Buol that Russia would withdraw from the Congress if the demand was made, that he had raised the issue during the first preliminary meetings in an attempt to draw Clarendon into the open. The initiative worked as the British plenipotentiaries were unable to give a precise account of their aims and, shorn of any support from the French, the issue was quietly dropped. A disgruntled Clarendon was forced to tell an equally disappointed Stratford that without Napoleon’s unqualified support it was pointless pressing ahead with the British demands. It proved to be a first and last triumph for Buol. As Clarendon noted with approval, following a meeting with Napoleon on 23 March, the plenipotentiaries had succeeded in freezing the Austrians out of the proceedings:
The Austrian alliance which a few months ago was so ardently desired, and to secure which Her Majesty’s Government were urged to accept inadmissible conditions, is now viewed with comparative indifference. The Emperor spoke with detestation of Austrian policy and in slighting tones of the Emperor of Austria, but on the other hand, there is an evident tendency on the part of the Emperor towards Russia – a dislike to offend and great desire to be agreeable to the Emperor of Russia.7
By that time the proceedings were drawing to a close. In all there were twenty-four official sessions and innumerable private discussions behind closed doors; the final Treaty of Paris resulted in 34 articles, with three annexes, and its main provisions seemed to justify the terms of the original Austrian ultimatum.* The integrity of the Ottoman Empire was recognised, Russia returned Kars in exchange for concessions in Bessarabia and agreed to the neutralisation of the Black Sea. She also agreed to relinquish claims to the Danubian principalities and finally dropped the right to act as guardian to the Christians resident in the Ottoman Empire. However, the congress failed to integrate the Sultan’s promised reform programme into the final treaty. The only reference to the Hatti-i-Humayan, which had been decreed on 18 February (and which is discussed in the next chapter), appeared in article IX and it was limited to a recognition of the Sultan’s promises.
However, within a year of the treaty being signed, the efforts of all the participants in the war seemed to be mocked on Good Friday when fighting broke out amongst pilgrims and priests in Bethlehem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the annual miracle of light from heaven service. According to those present it was as bad as anything witnessed by Robert Curzon and others before the war.
Following the signature of the treaty on 30 March 1856 – at the last minute the British objected to a ceremony on a Sunday but were forced to yield – each side claimed a victory of sorts. As the guns roared out from Les Invalides at two o’clock in the afternoon Napoleon was well satisfied with events, his pleasure having been increased by the birth of a son. If he had not put a stamp on the Congress by redrawing the map of Europe, he had at least retrieved French respect and dignity. His dealings with Orlov paved the way for rapprochement with Russia and within a decade Alexander II would visit Paris. True, Napoleon had not been able to do anything for Poland, and a pro-French Romania would not come into being for another six years, but he had manufactured a triumphant conclusion to a war which had become a drain on his country’s resources.
Britain, too, felt that the peace treaty was not dishonourable – Palmerston was rewarded with the Order of the Garter – but if any country had a right to feel aggrieved it was Sardinia, the loyal ‘Sardines’ who had fought so uncomplainingly alongside their British allies. That was the feeling uppermost in Clarendon’s mind when he wrote his final despatch on 17 April following the closing meeting of the plenipotentiaries who had stayed on in Paris to discuss broader issues, including the revision of maritime law regarding neutral countries:
A conciliatory spirit has been maintained throughout our discussions and although questions calculated to excite irritation have not infrequently arisen, they have been dealt with in calm and becoming tones. The Plenipotentiaries have separated in the most friendly terms with each other, well satisfied with the result of their labours and hopeful that the good understanding established between their respective governments may secure a long continuance of Peace.
The only exception to the general feeling of satisfaction is on the part of the Sardinian-Piedmontese who lament that no measure should have been taken to remedy the evils under which Italy has so long laboured and who distrust, more perhaps than they are quite justified in doing, the policy and intentions of Austria.8
In fact Clarendon had done his best for King Victor Emmanuel’s nation by stating publicly that he regretted Austria’s influence in Italy but without overt French support there was little he could do to redress the situation. The next day he left Paris and was destined to remain in office for another two years until Palmerston was replaced by Lord Derby’s government in 1858. Cowley lasted longer, remaining in Paris until 1867 by which time he was suspected by other members of the diplomatic community of being ‘more French than he ought to be’. For their labours at the Congress both men were granted elevations in the peerage, but both declined the Queen’s offer, Clarendon because he thought it would exclude his eldest son from future employment and Cowley because he could not afford the additional costs which would be incurred.
One more boil remained to be lanced: Britain’s quarrel with the United States. With terrier-like determination Marcy had pursued the issue of the guilt of Crampton and his consuls, offering as evidence the findings of the trial against Hertz. With equal firmness, and backed by Crampton’s denials, Clarendon had rejected the complaints as fabrication. For Charles Rowcroft in Cincinnati, one of the consuls most blamed by Marcy for his role in encouraging recruiting agents, and who did most to dig up evidence to rebut the charges, the issue was quite simple. It had long since stopped being a question which concerned the sovereign rights of the United States: by the end of 1855 it had become an internal political problem. President Pierce was due to fight for re-nomination and he was anxious to show a firm hand. In other words, argued Rowcroft, the government was using the row ‘to drive the differences up to the verge of a war, with the hope of stirring up the jealousies and passions of the masses so as to get their votes for a war party’.9
There was some truth to his allegation. As President, Pierce had proved to be a non-entity who failed to confront the slavery issue, and who alienated northern Democrats with his support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Throughout his presidency the United States had been in turmoil, economic crisis was on the horizon, the Republican party was about to become a political force and, in foreign affairs, there had been several illegal privately funded attempts to expand US territorial holdings in central America. It would not have been unnatural had Pierce attempted to divert public attention from his disastrous presidency by drumming up a crisis with Britain. Crampton was inclined to agree with that interpretation, which had the support of sections of the New York press, but, of course, he had a vested interest in ensuring that his role in the recruiting scandal was never fully exposed.
The crunch came on 28 December 1855 when Marcy sent a long and detailed letter to Buchanan, for communication to Clarendon, arguing the existence of a ‘a very wide difference of opinion between this Government and that of Great Britain, in regard to the principles of law involved in the pending discussion, and a still wider difference, if possible, as to the material facts of the case’. It was a lawyer’s letter, discursive and rambling, yet carefully phrased, and it contained a complete history of the bumbling attempts to raise recruits in the United States, as the facts had emerged in discussion with Crampton and, critically, from the trial of the British agents. It also contained a number of verbose quotations from international jurists stating that the enlistment of foreign nationals against the will of the host country was a serious crime. All this was related in lengthy detail but, according to Marcy, the most heinous part of the story was the subterfuge and deceit practised by Crampton and his colleagues. As for Clarendon, there was pained amazement that a politician of a friendly nation should try to cover up all the details in an attempt to present British behaviour in an acceptable light:
I am quite certain that Lord Clarendon is not aware of the serious importance which the United States attaches to the question under discussion; otherwise he would not have so harshly characterised the conduct of the United States’ officers on whom the duty to suppress recruiting for the British service was devolved; nor would he have so freely arraigned the motives of this Government for requiring some satisfaction for what it regards as a grave national wrong.10
The letter ended with the demand for Crampton’s recall and it was finally discussed on 29 January when Buchanan was summoned to the Foreign Office. By that time, however, Clarendon’s attention was fully taken up with the peace negotiations in Paris and he greeted Buchanan with scant courtesy. The details would have to await further scrutiny, he explained; meanwhile he contented himself with the observation that ‘Mr Crampton had never been engaged in violating [our] neutrality laws and he considered his simple declaration to that effect far more worthy of credit than the conference of such a man as Hertz’. According to Buchanan the meeting was ‘icy’ and it ended on a sharp note as he expressed his own disappointment at Britain’s behaviour:
I then observed that if the same things had been done in England which had been done in the United States, they would probably realise the reason why we were so sensitive on the subject.11
However, Clarendon was not to be moved and Buchanan left with the impression that even after the complaint had been considered Britain would refuse to recall Crampton and the consuls. Four days later he wrote again to Marcy reporting a ‘belligerent feeling’ in the country about the United States and expressing his opinion that the peace with Russia was so unpopular that a crisis with the United States could provide a way out of the negotiations in Paris. Already articles had started appearing in the press calling for the main cities on the eastern seaboard to be attacked and for regiments of black soldiers to be raised in the West Indies for the purpose of exciting rebellion in the southern states. However far-fetched those ideas were, Buchanan was acutely aware of the fact that a breakdown in diplomatic relations raised tensions so that ‘the occurrence of any untoward event may produce hostilities’.
Fortunately for Buchanan he was excused the indignity of being recalled in retaliation for the threats made to Crampton. On 17 March he requested his passports and, amid many protestations of goodwill, returned to the United States to pick up his political career. He was replaced by a former vice-president, George Dallas, whose unenviable task it was to maintain his country’s dignity while building a satisfactory relationship with the British government. Following further protestations by Crampton the British refused to recall him and, furthermore, Palmerston wanted to end the matter by expelling the newly arrived Dallas. While this proposal smacked more of the Palmerston of old it was sensibly disregarded by his cabinet colleagues. As the Duke of Argyll noted in his memoirs there was a knack in knowing how to handle the prickly prime minister:
His first impulse was always to move fleets and to threaten our opponents, sometimes on trivial occasions, on the details of which he had not fully informed himself by careful reading. Then, on finding his proposals combated, he was candid in listening and in inquiring and if he found the objections reasonable, he could give way to them with the most perfect good humour. This was a great quality in a man so impulsive and so strong-headed as he was, and so prone to violent action. It made him a much less dangerous man than he was supposed to be. But I made it an all-important matter that he should have colleagues who understood him and were not afraid of him.12
Those qualities were badly need by his colleagues in the days that followed. No sooner had Dallas arrived than there was news of a fresh privateering expedition in central America. Led by William Walker, a failed journalist, it seized Nicaragua and declared the whole of the Mosquito coast to be in the possession of the United States. As this infringed British rights Palmerston demanded the despatch of a battle fleet to begin a blockade – a move which would certainly have resulted in war with the United States. However, as Argyll noted, an injection of common sense in the shape of Clarendon’s advice to negotiate, ended the crisis. Ships were sent but there was no blockade and, by way of compromise, Pierce’s administration refused to support Walker’s initiative.
However, the president was not prepared to back down over Crampton. On 28 May he handed him his passports, thereby breaking off diplomatic relations with him, and Crampton was forced to return to Britain. While this was an insult, and one which Palmerston did not want to leave unchallenged, the government decided to do nothing. Crampton returned home to a knighthood and ended his career with further appointments in Hanover, St Petersburg and Madrid, retiring in 1869 after more than forty years in the diplomatic service. To the end of his life he protested his innocence in the recruiting crisis which had brought Britain and the United States so close to the brink of war.
By that time, too, a sense of normality had returned to Britain’s dealings with Russia. Diplomatic relations were resumed in May when Brunnov returned to London to a post which he was to hold until 1874. The British embassy in St Petersburg reopened later that summer and was soon hard at work helping to re-establish the trading links which had been interrupted by the blockade of the Baltic. Alexander II was keen to mend fences with France and the two emperors were soon on good terms. The détente with France continued throughout the 1860s as France and Russia attempted to show a united front in the face of Prussia’s steady rise to power as the main force of German unification.
It was that movement which finally gave Russia the opportunity to retrieve its honour. When the attention of the European powers was taken up with the war between Prussia and France in the late summer of 1870, Alexander abrogated the Treaty of Paris as far as the neutrality of the Black Sea was concerned. His move created a fuss but little else: in March 1871, with the Convention of London, Russia’s sovereign rights in the Black Sea were restored although Turkey maintained the right to call up naval assistance if her treaty rights were infringed.
Seven years later, peace was threatened in the area and a repeat of the war in the Crimea seemed possible when Russia and Turkey found themselves at cross purposes. Once again, the Eastern Question was to blame. At Paris the problems of the Balkans had never been addressed; they remained under Ottoman rule and despite exhortations by Britain (most notably by Stratford during his tenure at Constantinople) the Porte had been loath to introduce reforms and the result had been a succession of local revolts. At first the British government, now led by Disraeli, had been minded to support the Sultan when his forces put down a serious revolt in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875. This was, after all, British policy and Disraeli refused to listen to promptings by Russia, Germany and Austria that the Great Powers should intervene. ‘They have begun to treat England as if we were Montenegro or Monaco,’ he complained to Brunnov, still Russia’s ambassador in London.
But for once Disraeli had misjudged the public mood. Within a year the Daily News had begun publishing accounts of the fighting in the Balkans and the descriptions of the outrages caused widespread indignation. Gladstone, the opposition leader, delivered his famous opinion in his pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East which called for the Turks to carry out of Europe their ‘Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage’. It was a splendidly splenetic document – the Liberal leader claimed that the soil of the Balkans was ‘soaked and reeking with blood’ – but Disraeli chose to play it down. When the question was debated in the House of Commons he retorted that while there had been atrocities, Turks ‘seldom resort to torture but generally terminate their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner’.
Disraeli’s refusal to treat the crisis seriously could not last. In an attempt to resolve the issue in January 1877 a conference was held in Constantinople at which the new Sultan Abdulhamid II showed little interest in renewing his predecessor’s pledges to introduce reforms. When the talks broke down in April Russia went to war with Turkey and by December its army was threatening Constantinople. That changed everything. For a few giddy months the past seemed to repeat itself as a wave of violent patriotism swept through the country. Forgetting the evidence of Gladstone’s pamphlet the people of Britain now flocked to support gallant Turkey against the Russian bear and the war fever was strong as anything which Timothy Gowing had experienced in 1854. By Christmas there was even a new music-hall song which introduced jingoism to the language: ‘We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do/We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!’
And in scenes which Lyons and Dundas would have recognised – except that all the ships were iron-clad, steam-powered and lower in the water – Vice-Admiral Sir George Hornby’s Mediterranean fleet steamed into the Dardanelles in February 1878. At the same time the Royal Navy began preparations at Spithead to assemble a powerful fleet of ironclads and coastal assault ships to move into the Baltic and to carry out the plans laid in 1856 for the assault of Kronstadt. Knowledge of those preparations was the decisive factor for Russia knew that her navy would be incapable of defending the Gulf of Finland but, even so, Hornby’s ships were obliged to remain in the Black Sea for the rest of the summer.
The reason for their presence was the unequal Treaty of San Stefano which ended the fighting between Russia and Turkey. Agreed in March 1878 it allowed Russia to have full control over the Balkans, a situation which was anathema to the European powers as it would bring the Mediterranean into Alexander’s sphere of influence. This time, though, there would be no war. Remembering the lessons of two decades ago Britain’s new foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, called a conference in Berlin in the summer of 1878 with Bismarck acting as honest broker. Under its terms Austria occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina; the independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania was recognised; Russia was awarded Bessarabia and Bulgaria was largely returned to the Sultan.
In that it prevented a repeat of the Crimean War, it was a diplomatic triumph – Disraeli called it ‘peace with honour’ – but it did lay down all manner of problems which would re-emerge thirty-six years later to plunge Europe into an even worse conflict. At the time of the Congress of Berlin, however, there was universal relief and a feeling, in Britain at least, that no one wanted a repetition of the experience of the Crimean War.