“The last word of the Eastern Question,” said Lord Derby, “is—Who is to have Constantinople?”

Lord Derby may be right; but it seems, after all, that the importance of Constantinople has been strangely, even ridiculously, exaggerated. The popular conception of the city as a kind of talisman of Empire is really as absurd as the other superstitions about talismans which flourished in the age from which the superstition about Constantinople is a somewhat grotesque revival.

Constantinople has long since ceased to play the most important part in the history of the world. The idea of its importance dates from the time when civilisation and commerce were almost confined to the shores of the Mediterranean. When Constantinople acquired its domination over the imagination of men one-half of the capitals of modern Europe did not exist; and, with the exception of Rome, none of those which had begun to live could venture to rival the position of the city of Constantine. All that is changed. Alike in commerce and in war, in science and in religion, the world’s centre is no longer on the Bosphorus.

A company of London merchants have created at the other side of Asia an Empire more splendid than that of Amurath; and our Peter the Great reared on the icebound shores of the Northern Seas a capital whose monarchs dictate the terms on which the rulers of Constantinople are permitted to hold their Empire.

The whole world has been transformed since our ancestors, crusading with the Lion-heart or conquering with Sviatoslaf, learned to regard Constantinople as the natural seat of universal Empire.

Constantinople is no longer even the commercial emporium of the world, standing midway between two continents, and essential to both. Since the days of Constantine, an Englishman, a Portuguese, and a Frenchman have changed everything. Constantinople resembles a seaport from which the ocean has receded, for the Steam Engine, the Cape route, and the Suez Canal have dried up the ancient channels of trade between Asia and Europe. The road to the Indies no longer runs through the Bosphorus, and the commercial glories of Constantinople are now almost as faded as those of Trebizonde.

“The Empire of the world” is so far from belonging to the owners of Constantinople, that even the appointment of their officials is dictated to them by telegrams from London, emphasised by ironclads at Malta. Stripped of this romantic halo of superstition and exaggeration, what is Constantinople?

Constantinople is a city commanding the narrow straits by which alone the dwellers on the shores of the Black Sea and the vast populations on the rivers draining into that ocean can gain access to the Mediterranean. To Russia, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, and the Balkan States, the ownership of Constantinople can never be the matter of indifference which it might be to the other European States. Constantinople is the gate of the Euxine, and the question, Who shall keep its keys? is of vital interest only to Euxine and Danubian States, and therefore primarily to Russia.

Commercially the ownership of Constantinople, as commanding the Bosphorus, which has been described as the real mouth of the Danube, is almost as important to Austria as to Russia. Politically, however, it is of more importance to Russia. Austria has no seaboard on the Black Sea; no ironclads can threaten her from the Euxine, while the Russian seaboard lies open to every attack. It is, therefore, doubly important for us that the keys of the Black Sea should be in the hands of—if not of a friendly Power—then of a Power too weak to be a menace to the safety of our ports or the security of our commerce.

From a commercial and political point of view, the Sultan is as good a gatekeeper of the Euxine as Russia could wish to have. As Emperor Nicholas told Sir Hamilton Seymour, “Nothing better for our interests could be desired.” In former times the Sultan closed the Black Sea to all the commerce of the world, and menaced Europe with conquest. Russia has effectively opened the Black Sea to trade, and at the present day Russia could not possibly have a more submissive doorkeeper than her helpless debtor, the Sultan, although if he has a fault it is that he is a little too weak to uphold his treaty rights against the encroachments of England.

In Constantinople, under the eye of the Ambassadors, the Sultan cannot do much harm, and he need not have more than a “cabbage garden in Europe.” This arrangement is practicable enough. It was nearly a century after the Turks made Adrianople the capital of their European dominions, that they succeeded in taking Constantinople, which from 1361 to 1453 preserved its independence.

Russia has repeatedly approached Constantinople. She has never entered it. The only entrance with which we have been credited was due to English ignorance of the French language. While the discussion of Mr. Forster’s amendment in the House of Commons hostile to the six millions war vote was proceeding. Count Schouvaloff, talking to a lady at an evening party in London, observed in passing, “Oh, mon Dieu! quant à Constantinople, nous sommes dedans,” a colloquial French expression meaning, “We have been taken in or deceived.” It passed from mouth to mouth, and was construed as a positive announcement by the Russian Ambassador that our army had entered Constantinople!

Next morning several London papers appeared with excited articles, commencing, “Nous sommes dedans! The Russians are in Constantinople—such was the categorical declaration of Count Schouvaloff, the Russian Ambassador!” and then followed the usual inflammatory nonsense concerning Russian “perfidy” and Muscovite “greed,” of which the London press always keeps so large a quantity in stock, and whilst Count Schouvaloff, with difficulty preserving his gravity, was endeavouring to explain French phrases to English Ministers, Sir A. Layard’s misleading telegrams about the alleged advance of Russian troops on Constantinople, seemed to the masses to confirm the English interpretation of “Nous sommes dedans,” and, in the explosion of excitement which followed, Mr. Forster’s amendment was withdrawn.

That, however, was the only Russian entry into Constantinople recorded in history. In 1829 a Council of the Empire decided that as no arrangement could be more advantageous to Russia than the maintenance of the Sultan in Constantinople, he should be left on his throne. Russia, in 1833, and again in 1840, interfered to save the Sultan from destruction, and it is possible events may again call for her intervention against another foe. It was said to be “against the well understood interests of the Russian Empire” that Turkey should be destroyed.

I was told the other day that a belief prevails in high official quarters among the Turks that the English Government intended to invite Austria to occupy Constantinople when the collapse comes. Lord Salisbury’s “sentinel of the gate” is to be placed in possession of the city, and the Government of Vienna and Pesth is to hold the keys of the Black Sea.

It is well to be plain spoken. Unless one admits that Austrian statesmen have altogether taken leave of their wits, one should acquit them of any desire to reign on the Bosphorus. Is it not only to Lord Salisbury that we should say, “Pas trop de zèle; surtout pas trop de zèle? Poor “Austrians” have sins enough on their conscience without our adding to them all that the English Minister can meditate for them to perpetrate. But should a design like this really be contemplated, it could evidently be executed only by war. Russia could not humbly submit to see the key of the Black Sea conferred upon a rival Power without her becoming the laughing-stock of the whole world. “England understands,” said Count Nesselrode in 1853—what Austria understands to-day—“that Russia cannot suffer the establishment at Constantinople of a Christian Power sufficiently strong to control or disquiet her. The Emperor disclaimed any wish or design of establishing himself there, but he has determined not to allow either the English or the French to establish themselves there.” In those days an Austrian occupation of Constantinople was too absurd even to be talked of. Russia desires to see at Constantinople what your Ministers pretended to desire to see at Cabul—a strong, a friendly, and an independent Power. There is, however, this difference; that for you such a state of affairs was a superfluous luxury, whilst to us it would be an imperative necessity.

It is the inveterate superstition of Russophobists that we desire to annex Constantinople. Our history does not justify the suspicion. But it is quite true that Constantinople occupies such a place in the Russian imagination that, questions of self-preservation apart, no Russian Emperor could tolerate the Austrians on the Bosphorus.

The Italian Peninsula until twenty years ago was the amphitheatre in which France and Austria struggled for ascendancy. Austria represented the power of the conqueror. France fostered the national idea. The interest of the European drama has been shifted eastward. The Balkan Peninsula takes the place of that of Italy. Austria again represents foreign conquest; but the representative of nationality and independence is no longer France, but Russia—“a Power,” as was observed the other day by a very intelligent diplomatist, “which never gave up in the course of all this century any step which she thought it her duty to pursue, though she sometimes consented to intervals of halt.” In both peninsulas the Imperial city exercises a strange fascination. To save the Eternal City from falling into the hands of Austria, the French Republicans stifled in blood the Republic of Rome. Said M. Thiers, “You can scarcely estimate the importance we attach to Rome. As the throne of Catholicism, as the centre of Art, as having been long the second city of the French Empire, it fills in our minds almost as great a space as Paris. To know that the Austrian flag was flying over the Castle of St. Angelo is a humiliation under which no French-man could bear to exist; and,” then exclaimed the impetuous Frenchman, “rather than see the Austrian eagle on the flagstaff that rises above the Tiber, I would destroy a hundred Constitutions and a hundred religions.”¹

If the thought of Rome falling into the hands of Catholic Austria excited such passions in the heart of Catholic and Voltairean France, can you wonder if the thought of Catholic Austria in possession of St. Sophia kindles feelings of ungovernable indignation in the minds of Orthodox Russia? Constantinople fills an even greater space in our imagination than Rome in that of the Frenchman. Our religion is Byzantine, our laws, our Constitution, our architecture have all more or less been influenced by Byzantium.

Russia may endure the status quo. She has certainly no desire to possess Constantinople. But she never could consent to Constantinople passing either to Catholic Austria or Protestant England.

Russia’s relations to Constantinople take their rise in the heroic ages of her history; nor should Russians hesitate to admit that they began in a series of attempts on the part of our early rulers to possess themselves of Constantinople—that is, of Tzargrad, or “King of Cities,” as it was then popularly described in Russia.

No fewer than five several times in the course of two centuries Russia attempted to conquer Tzargrad, and this, no doubt, is sufficient to convince our enemies that we are animated by a never-dying desire to possess Constantinople. The argument, I confess, seems to me somewhat weak.

The attempt to conquer the East at the dawn of the Middle Ages was almost exclusively Scandinavian. Whether it was directed from the North-East or the North-West of Europe, the restless valour of the Norse Vikings impelled alike all the Russian expeditions under our Variag² Princes against Constantinople and the Crusades of the Western monarchs. Oleg was no more a Russian than Richard was an Englishman. The impulse which drove the Franks to plant their standard on the walls of Jerusalem, although to a large extent religious, was greatly due to the same fierce Norman fever for conquest which drove Sviatoslaf to capture the city of Philippopolis and Oleg to hang his shield on the Golden Door at Byzantium. If these early Variag expeditions of ours in the tenth century against Constantinople prove that Russia to-day desires to seize the city of the Sultans, much more does the conquering of Constantinople in the twelfth century by the Crusaders from the West prove that Tzargrad is in danger from the descendants of those who made the Third Crusade.

The first attack was made by Askold and Dir, who, true to their Viking instincts, conducted a naval expedition against Byzantium. They perished, with their two hundred vessels, in a tempest.

The second attack was more successful. Oleg, in 907, with 2,000 vessels, invested Tzargrad by land, and dictated terms of peace at the gates of the city. An indemnity was exacted from the Greek Emperor, a commercial treaty was signed, and Oleg suspended his shield from the Golden Door. His successor, Igor, was less fortunate. His flotilla was destroyed by Greek fire in his first attempt, but in 944 the menace of a second invasion induced the rulers of Byzantium to pay an indemnity and sign a new commercial treaty. The most memorable war of early Russia against the Lower Empire was that which resulted in the annihilation of the army of Sviatoslaf by the forces of John Zimisces. The origin of the war was curious. The Byzantine Emperor, finding himself in danger from Bulgaria, then an independent kingdom under its own Tzars, called on the Russians to defend his capital against the nationality on whose behalf Russia fought her war of 1877-8. Sviatoslaf, with an army of 60,000 men, subsidised by Byzantium, crushed the resistance of the Bulgarians, captured their capital and all their fortresses, and practically annexed their country. John Zimisces demanded its evacuation. Sviatoslaf replied by threatening Constantinople. War ensued between the late allies, and after displaying marvellous bravery at Silistria the Russians were completely defeated, and the remains of their heroic army evacuated the Balkan. This was in 972. Seventy years afterwards, Yaroslaf the Great, the Charlemagne of Russia, sent an expedition against the Greek Empire, which met a disastrous fate. The stormy Euxine, Greek fire, and the sword of Monomachus destroyed it to the last man. Only 800 Russians, blinded by their captors, survived as prisoners in Byzantium. Seven centuries had to pass away before a Russian army again encamped in the Balkan Peninsula. It was not until 1772 that Russians again crossed the Danube, and the war which was ended by the Treaty of Kainardji certainly did not aim at the conquest of Constantinople.

The only war which Russia entered upon with the design of changing the ownership of Constantinople was that which sprang from “the Greek project,” arranged between Catherine the Great and Joseph II., and which was begun by the Turks in 1787. But although it was agreed by Austria and Russia to place Constantine, the second son of Paul I., on the vacant throne of Tzargrad, it was expressly declared that Constantinople should not be annexed to Russia.

This arrangement was a strange one, and under present circumstances it may be interesting to reproduce it, as it proves that, in the eighteenth as in the nineteenth century, Austria’s appetite for the inheritance of the Sick Man was far greater than that of Russia.

Austria was to have Servia, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, as well as Dalmatia, which then belonged to Venice, recouping the Venetians for Dalmatia by ceding them the Morea, Candia, and Cyprus. Russia was only to have Otchakoff, the strip of land between the Bug and the Dnieper, and one or two islands of the Archipelago. If the war were crowned with such success that the Turks were expelled from Constantinople, the Greek Empire was to be re-established in complete independence, the throne of Byzantium to be filled by the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovitch, who was to renounce all claims to the throne of Russia, so that the two kingdoms might never be united under the same sceptre.³

When the ambitious schemes of Catherine are referred to as proving the desperate determination of Russia to annex Constantinople, it is well to remember that that monarch laid it down as an imperative direction for the policy of Russia that Constantinople and Moscow should never be united under the same sceptre.

The war did not prosper as was expected. Poland was partitioned instead of Turkey, and Russia contented herself with Otchakoff.

During the Napoleonic wars, Alexander I. submitted to England a scheme for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, in case of its existence becoming incompatible with the present state of Europe. England was not cordial, but she concluded a treaty of subsidies with the Emperor against Napoleon. A few years afterwards, when Napoleon and Alexander met at Tilsit, there occurs the only occasion in history in which a Russian Emperor expressed a wish to secure possession of Constantinople. Napoleon declares that Alexander urged strongly a claim to Constantinople, but that he refused to hear of it. The arrangement that was arrived at provided that Russia and France should “come to an understanding to withdraw all the Ottoman provinces in Europe—Constantinople and Roumelia excepted—from the yoke and tyranny of the Turks.” That desirable consummation even now is not yet completed, although the Treaty of Berlin, in this respect, does not fall far short of the provisions of the Treaty of Tilsit.

Since that time our Emperors have not only persistently repudiated any intention to annex Constantinople, but they have as consistently refused to take any step to deprive the Sultan of his capital.

In 1829, when our armies were at Adrianople, it was decided that it would be detrimental to Russia’s interests to overthrow the Government of the Sultan on the Bosphorus, but if such a contingency could not be averted they proposed that Constantinople should be made a free city.

The contingency did not arise, and the city remained in the hands of the Sultan, to the regret even of Conservative Englishmen. “There is no doubt,” said the Duke of Wellington, “that it would have been more fortunate, and better for the world, if the Treaty of Adrianople had not been signed, and if the Russians had entered Constantinople, and if the Turkish Empire had been dissolved.”⁴ Lord Holland was even more outspoken. In the session of 1830, in his place in Parliament he exclaimed, “As a citizen of the world, I am sorry that the Russians have not taken Constantinople.”⁵

In 1833, when the success of Mehemet Ali threatened the Ottoman Empire with sudden dissolution, a Russian army occupied Constantinople for the defence of the Sultan against his rebellious vassal. Lord Palmerston, in the debate on the presence of Russians at Constantinople, to which the English Government had consented, said;—“I very much doubt whether the Russian nation would be prepared to see that transference of power, of residence, and of authority to the southern provinces which would be the necessary consequence of the conquest by Russia of Constantinople; and if we have quietly beheld the temporary occupation of the Turkish capital by the forces of Russia it is because we have full confidence in the honour and good faith of Russia, and believe that those troops will be withdrawn in a very short time.”⁶ Lord Palmerston was justified in his confidence, and our troops were withdrawn when the capital was out of danger.

If only a similar just confidence had been displayed in 1878 Europe would not have been brought to the verge of a gigantic war.

In the Crimean War I only need to refer to Mr. Kinglake’s authority to prove that “it would be wrong to believe” that when the steps were taken which brought about the war “Russia was acting in furtherance of territorial aggrandisement,” much less from a design to annex Constantinople.

In 1876, and still more signally in 1878, Russia remained true to her traditional policy. The words of our Emperor to Lord Augustus Loftus, at Livadia, may here be given as the latest authoritative expression of Russia’s will on this subject.

The Emperor said he had not the smallest wish or intention to be possessed of Constantinople. “All that had been said or written about a will of Peter the Great and the aims of Catherine II. were illusions and phantoms, and never existed in reality; and he considered that the acquisition of Constantinople would be a misfortune for Russia. There was no question of it, nor had it ever been entertained by his late father, who had given a proof of it in 1828 when his victorious army was within four days’ march of the Turkish capital. . . . His Majesty pledged his sacred word of honour, in the most earnest and solemn manner, that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople.

“His Majesty here reverted to the proposal addressed to Her Majesty’s Government for the occupation of Bosnia by Austria, of Bulgaria by Russia, and of a naval demonstration at Constantinople, where, he said, Her Majesty’s fleet would have been the dominant power. This, His Majesty thought, ought to be a sufficient proof that Russia entertained no intention of occupying that capital.

“His Majesty could not understand why there should not be a perfect understanding between England and Russia—an understanding based on a policy of peace—which would be equally beneficial to their mutual interests and those of Europe at large.

“‘Intentions,’ said His Majesty, ‘are attributed to Russia of a future conquest of India and of the possession of Constantinople. Can anything be more absurd? With regard to the former it is a perfect impossibility; and as regards the latter I repeat again the most solemn assurances that I entertain neither the wish nor the intention.’”⁷

Not less categorical was the more formal declaration of the Russian Government. Prince Gortschakoff, on May 18, 1877, defined the position of Russia towards that city. He wrote:—“As far as concerns Constantinople . . . the Imperial Cabinet repeats that the acquisition of that capital is excluded from the views of His Majesty the Emperor. They recognise that in any case the future of Constantinople is a question of common interest, which cannot be settled otherwise than by a general understanding, and that if the possession of the city were to be put in question, it could not be allowed to belong to any of the Great Powers.”

The Treaty of San Stefano—signed when Turkey was absolutely in Russia’s power—proved that Russia had no intention of dispossessing the Sultan of Stamboul; and it is probable that “the well understood interests of the Russian Empire” are still believed to require the maintenance of his authority as custodian of the Straits.

Constantinople, though it possesses great religious and historical attractions to Russians, has not that exaggerated importance in our eyes that is held in the minds of both English and Turkish statesmen. Mr. Gladstone, at St. James’s Hall, and again at Midlothian, declared that if England had been in Russia’s place “she would have eaten up Turkey long ago.” Fuad Pasha, in that political testament which affords so singular an illustration of a statesman-like perception on the part of a Turkish Minister, declares, “If I had been myself a Russian Minister I would have overturned the world to have conquered Constantinople.”⁸ Russian Ministers do not share the idea of Fuad Pasha, that the possession of Constantinople is worth the overturn of the world. If we transferred our capital to the Bosphorus, Constantinople would be the Achilles’ heel of the Russian Empire.

I was discussing this subject a short time since with a brilliant Frenchman. “I do not see,” he remarked, half jokingly, half seriously, “why Russia should not have Constantinople. I desire nothing so much as to see you there.” “But,” I remonstrated, “we do not share your desire. The day we established ourselves on the Bosphorus our decline would begin.” “Certainly,” rejoined my sarcastic friend; “and that is precisely why I wished to see you there!”⁹

If, however, sudden collapse should occur, and the ownership of Constantinople should come up for settlement, it seems to me that there are, perhaps, only two solutions which Russia can even so much as discuss.

The first is the conversion of Constantinople into a free city under the guarantee of Europe, governed by an International Commission. To this there is the grave objection that Constantinople carries with it the sovereignty of Asia Minor, which can hardly be vested in either an International Commission or in the civic authorities of a single city.

The other solution is the establishment under the tutelage and guarantee of Europe of a European Prince, a persona grata to all the Powers as Sovereign of Byzantium and Asia Minor.

Time is not yet ripe for making Constantinople the seat of a Balkan Confederation. It would be absurd and dangerous to entrust it to Greece, and the veto of Russia is recorded in advance against any scheme of placing Constantinople in the hands of any of the Powers.

Our position is clear and unambiguous. If England is equally free from all arrières pensées as to the last word of the Eastern Question, why should we not come to a perfect understanding on the subject based on “a policy of peace which would be equally beneficial to our mutual interests and to those of Europe at large”?

1. Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot, and other distinguished Persons, Nassau W. Senior, vol. i. pp. 53, 61.
2. In English usually called “Varangian.”
3. Rambaud’s History of Russia, vol. ii. p. 160.
4. Wellington Despatches, vol. vi. p. 219.
5. Thirty Years of Foreign Policy, p. 115.
6. Sir Tollemache Sinclair’s Defence of Russia, p. 6.
7. Blue Book, Turkey 1 (1877), p. 643.
8. Farley’s Turks and Christians, Appendix III. p. 239.
9. Emperor Nicholas told Sir Hamilton Seymour: “If an Emperor of Russia should one day chance to conquer Constantinople, or should find himself forced to occupy it permanently and fortify it with a view to making it impregnable, from that day would date the decline of Russia. . . . If once the Tzar were to take up his abode at Constantinople, Russia would cease to be Russian. No Russian would like that.” Even Mr. Cowen, M.P., in his lucid interval recognised this truth. Coming from such a Russophobist, the following remarks are perhaps of some little interest. “Many intelligent Russians,” said Mr. Cowen—speaking at Blaydon on September 30, 1876—“entertain strong objections to the extension of the Russian rule to Constantinople. And for this very sensible reason. . . . The Russians, whose number is considerable, and I believe increasing, are of opinion that it would be unwise to remove the capital of Russia from Petersburg to Constantinople. On these grounds, then, I dismiss this question of Russian extension as unworthy of consideration. The fear of Russian aggression is an exploded illusion.”