But the main reason why the Tsar would not commit to a major new offensive in the Crimea was his growing fear of an Austrian invasion of Russia. The cautious Paskevich, the only one of his senior commanders in whom he really trusted after Inkerman, had long been warning of the Austrian threat to Russian Poland, which he thought was far more serious than the danger to the Crimea. In a letter to the Tsar on 20 December, Paskevich persuaded him to keep a large corps of infantry in the Dubno, Kamenets and Galicia border regions in case of an attack by the Austrians rather than send them to the Crimea. The Austrian threat had been underlined two weeks before, when the Austrians had entered a military alliance with France and Britain promising to defend the Danubian principalities against the Russians in exchange for the allies’ pledge to defend them against the Russians and guarantee their possessions in Italy for the duration of the war. In reality, the Austrians were far more concerned to use their new alliance to force the Western powers to negotiate a peace with the Russians under their own influence at Vienna than they were to go to war against Russia. But the Tsar still felt the betrayal of the Austrians, who had mobilized their troops to force the Russians out of the Danubian principalities only the previous summer, and he was afraid of them. Between 7 January and 12 February the Tsar wrote long notes in his own hand in which he planned the measures he would take if Russia faced a war against the Austrians, the Prussians and the other German states. In each memorandum he became more convinced that such a war was imminent. It was perhaps a symptom of the growing desperation that took hold of the Tsar in his final days. He was haunted by the possibility that the whole Russian Empire would collapse – that all the territorial gains of his ancestors would be lost in this foolish ‘holy war’ – with Britain and the Swedes attacking Russia through the Baltic, Austria and Prussia attacking through Poland and the Ukraine, and the Western powers attacking in the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Realizing that it was impossible to defend all sectors simultaneously, he agonized over where to place his defences, and concluded that in the last resort it would be better to lose the Ukraine to the Austrians than to weaken the defences of the centre and ‘the heart of Russia’.46
At last, in early February, fearing that the Western powers were about to land a new invasion force to cut off the Crimea from the Russian mainland at Perekop, the Tsar ordered an offensive to recapture their likely landing base at the port of Evpatoria, which was then held by a Turkish force of around 20,000 troops under the command of Omer Pasha, supported by the guns of part of the allied fleets. The port’s defensive works, which included 34 pieces of heavy artillery, were formidable, so much so that Lieutenant General Baron Wrangel, the commander of the Russian cavalry in the Evpatoria area, thought that its capture was impossible, and would not take responsibility for an offensive. But Nicholas insisted that the attack should go ahead, giving the command to Wrangel’s deputy, Lieutenant General Khrulev, an artilleryman who was once described by Gorchakov as having ‘not much in the head, but very brave and active, who will do exactly what you tell him’. Asked by Menshikov whether it was possible to capture Evpatoria, Khrulev was confident of success. His force of 19,000 men (with 24 squadrons of cavalry and 108 guns) set off at daylight on 17 February, by which time the Tsar was having second thoughts about the wisdom of the expedition, thinking that it might be better to let the allies land their troops and attack them on their flank as they moved to Perekop. But it was too late to stop Khrulev. The offensive lasted three hours. The Russian troops were easily repulsed, with the loss of 1,500 men, and retreated across the open country towards Simferopol. Without shelter, many of them died from exhaustion and the cold, their frozen bodies abandoned on the steppe.
By the time the news of the defeat reached the Tsar in St Petersburg on 24 February, he was already gravely ill. The Tsar had come down with influenza on 8 February, but he continued with the daily tasks of government. On the 16th, feeling slightly better and ignoring the advice of his doctors, he went out without a winter coat in a frost of 23 degrees below zero to review the troops in St Petersburg. The next day he went out again. From that evening his health began to deteriorate terminally.
