The Crimean War полностью

The British pledged to arm Shamil’s army and expel the Russians from Circassia. On 11 June Stratford Canning reported to the Foreign Office that he had got the Porte ‘to issue a firman on Circassian independence in the event of the expulsion of Russia from their country’ (a dubious concept in this complex tribal area). By this time Longworth himself had arrived in Circassia, and had reported that the mountain tribes were well armed with Minié rifles and hunting guns. The British agent thought the Turks could lead the Circassian tribes on the Kuban plain in a war against Russia. Mustafa Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Turkish forces in Batumi, had met with the Circassian tribal leaders and had ‘virtually become the governor-general of Circassia’, Longworth reported. There were rumours of Mustafa raising a large Circassian army, up to 60,000 strong, to raid southern Russia from the Caucasus. But Longworth was afraid that the Ottomans were using the situation to reassert their power in the Caucasus, and he warned the British to oppose them. The local pashas were taking advantage of their renewed links with the Porte to rule despotically, and this had alienated many tribes from the British and the French as the allies of the Turks. Longworth also rejected the idea of supporting Shamil’s movement on the grounds that it had been infiltrated by Islamic fundamentalists, most notably by Shamil’s emissary (Naib) in Circassia, Muhammed Emin, who had pledged to expel all the Christians from the Caucasus and had forbidden Shamil’s followers from having any contact with the non-Muslims. According to Longworth, the Naib planned to build ‘a feudal empire based upon the principles of Islamic fanaticism’. Longworth’s reservations about supporting Shamil were shared by many Eastern experts at the Foreign Office in London. They warned against the use of Muslim forces (especially the Turks) against the Russians in Georgia and Armenia on the grounds that only a European army could have any real authority among the Christian population there.¹⁵

Unwilling to send in their own forces to the Caucasus, and frightened of depending upon Muslim troops, the British and the French delayed making a decision on what sort of policy they should develop in this crucial area. With an effective force in the Caucasus, the allies might have dealt a much swifter and more devastating blow to Russia than they achieved by laying siege to Sevastopol for eleven months. But they were too wary to exploit this potential.

The allies also had high hopes for the naval campaign in the Baltic, which was renewed in the spring. With a new fleet of steamships and floating batteries, and a new commander, Rear Admiral Sir Richard Dundas, in place of Napier, who had been widely blamed for the perceived failure of the campaign in 1854, there was optimistic talk of taking Kronstadt and Sveaborg, the Russian fortresses that Napier had failed to attack, and then of threatening St Petersburg itself. The naval surveyor and hydrographer who was placed in charge of planning the campaign was Captain Bartholomew Sulivan, who had accompanied Charles Darwin on the Beagle expedition. From his preliminary researches, Sulivan concluded that the fortresses could be captured by ships alone, without the need of land troops. When Clarendon went to Paris at the beginning of March to try to dissuade Napoleon from carrying out his threat to go to the Crimea, he took Sulivan’s report with him. It was warmly received by the Emperor, who thought that the decision not to attack Kronstadt in 1854 had been a disgrace. Like the British, Napoleon believed that Kronstadt’s capture would encourage Sweden to join the alliance against Russia.

The first British warships left Spithead on 20 March, with more following a fortnight later; the French fleet under Admiral Pénaud arrived in the Baltic on 1 June. In a vain attempt to reinforce the allied blockade of Russian trade – a blockade that was circumvented by trade through Germany – the British fleet attacked and destroyed various Russian coastal stations. But their main targets remained Kronstadt and Sveaborg. From his ship, 8 kilometres from Kronstadt, Prince Ernest of Leiningen wrote to his cousin Queen Victoria on 3 June:

There is the town before us with its numerous churches and spires and its endless batteries all showing their teeth ready to bite us if we give them a chance. The entrance of the harbour is guarded by two huge forts, Alexander and Menshikov, and to arrive at these ships must first pass the three tiers (78 guns) of Fort Risbank … From our masthead we can distinctly see the gilt cupolas and towers of St Petersburgh and right opposite the fleet is the magnificent palace of Oranienbaum, built of some white stone that looks very much like marble … It is still cold up here, but the weather is clear and we hardly have any night at all, only about two hours darkness from eleven to one.¹⁶