His Majesty the Tsar does not believe that those who profess the same religion as the Orthodox Emperor can submit to a government that is not Christian. If the Wallachians cannot understand that, because they are too much influenced by Europe, and given over to false beliefs, the Tsar nonetheless cannot renounce the mission that God has given him as the leader of the Orthodox, to remove for ever from the sovereignty of the Ottomans those who profess the true Christian faith, that is to say the Greek. That thought has preoccupied the Tsar since the beginning of his glorious reign, and the moment has arrived when His Majesty will carry out the project he has planned for many years, whatever may be the intentions of the powerless European states in the hold of false beliefs. The time will come when the rebellious Wallachians, who have incurred the wrath of His Majesty, will pay dearly for their disloyalty.
On 26 July the proclamation was read out to the assembled boyars in Bucharest by Gorchakov, who added his own parting words: ‘Gentlemen, we are leaving Bucharest for the moment, but I hope to return soon – remember 1812.’32
News of the withdrawal was a huge shock to the Slavophiles in Moscow and St Petersburg who had seen the Russian advance into the Balkans as a war of liberation for the Slavs. They now became despondent at what they saw as the abandonment of their ideals. Konstantin Aksakov had dreamed of a Slavic federation under Russian leadership. He thought the war would end with the planting of a cross on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. But the retreat from the Danube filled him ‘with feelings of disgust and shame’, as he wrote to his brother Ivan to explain:
It feels as if we are retreating from our Orthodox belief. If this is because we distrust, or because we are withdrawing from a holy war, then since the foundation of Russia there has never been such a shameful moment in our history – we have defeated enemies but not our own fear. And now what! … We are retreating from Bulgaria, but what will happen to the poor Bulgarians, to the crosses on the churches of Bulgaria? … Russia! If you leave God then God will leave you! You have renounced the holy mission with which He entrusted you to defend the holy faith and deliver your suffering brothers, and now God’s wrath will come to you, Russia!
Like many Slavophiles, the Aksakovs blamed the decision to retreat on Nesselrode, the ‘German’ Foreign Minister, who was now denounced in nationalist circles as a traitor to Russia and an ‘Austrian agent’. With the pan-Slav leader Pogodin, they mounted a campaign in the salons of St Petersburg and Moscow to persuade the Tsar to reverse the retreat and fight alone against the Austrians and the Western powers. They rejoiced in the fact that Russia would be fighting on its own against Europe, believing that a holy war for the Slavs’ liberation from Western influence would be the fulfilment of Russia’s messianic role.33
As the Russians withdrew from Wallachia, the Austrians moved in to restore order in the principality. An Austrian contingent of 12,000 troops under General Coronini pushed on as far as Bucharest, where they clashed with the Turks, who had already occupied the city following the retreat of the Russians. Omer Pasha, who had pronounced himself the ‘Governor of the Reoccupied Principalities’, refused to relinquish Bucharest to the Austrian commander. As a former Austrian subject who had joined the Turks, he could hardly be expected to hand over his hard-earned conquests to a courtier such as Coronini, who had been the personal tutor of the Emperor and stood for everything in the Habsburg world that Omer Pasha had rejected when he crossed over to the Ottomans. The Turkish commander was supported by the British and the French. Having spent so long attempting to involve the Austrians in the principalities, the allies now regarded the Austrian intervention as something of a mixed blessing. They were pleased that the Austrians had helped to liberate the principalities from Russian control, but they also suspected them of intending a long-term occupation of the principalities, either in the hope of substituting their own rule for the political vacuum left by the departure of the Russian troops, or in the belief that they might impose their own solution to the Russo-Turkish conflict at the expense of the West. Their suspicions were increased when the Austrians prevented Omer Pasha’s forces from pursuing the Russians into Bessarabia (the preferred tactics of Napoleon III); and even further when they reinstalled in power the Russian-nominated hospodars in a move evidently intended to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Tsar. To the British and the French, it seemed obvious that the Austrians had come to the rescue of the Danubian principalities, not as gendarmes of the European Concert, nor as champions of Turkish sovereignty, but with political motives of their own.34
