The Crimean War полностью

Zhukovsky, Vasily, tutor to Alexander II

About the Author

ORLANDO FIGES is the author of The Whisperers, Natasha’s Dance, and A People’s Tragedy, which have been translated into over twenty languages. The recipient of the Wolfson History Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, among others, Figes is a professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Notes

a

According to medieval Russian chronicles, the lands of Japheth were settled by the Rus′ and other tribes after the Flood in the Book of Genesis.

b

The Russians were steadily extending their system of fortresses along the Terek river (the ‘Caucasus Line’) and using their newly won protectorate over the Orthodox Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kacheti to build up a base of operations against the Ottomans, occupying Tbilisi and laying the foundations for the Georgian Military Highway to link Russia to the southern Caucasus.

c

Not to be confused with Mehmet Ali, the Egyptian ruler.

d

The name reverted to the Gold Cup after the outbreak of the Crimean War.

e

There is an obvious comparison with the Western view of Russia during the Cold War. The Russophobia of the Cold War era was partly shaped by nineteenth-century attitudes.

f

It also influenced British public opinion on the eve of the Crimean War. In May 1854, ‘The True Story of the Nuns of Minsk’ was published in Charles Dickens’s journal Household Words. The author of the article, Florence Nightingale, had met Makrena in Rome in 1848 and had written an account of her ordeal which she then put in a drawer. After the battle of Sinope, when the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, Nightingale brought out the article, which she thought might help to drum up popular support against Russia, and sent it to Dickens, who shortened it into the version that appeared in Household Words.

g

In 1850 the British public applauded the decision by Palmerston to send the Royal Navy to block the port of Athens in support of Don Pacifico, a British subject who had appealed to the Greek government for compensation after his home was burned down in an anti-Semitic riot in Athens. Don Pacifico was serving as the Portuguese consul in Athens at the time of the attack (he was a Portuguese Jew by descent) but he had been born in Gibraltar and was thus a British subject. On this basis (‘Civis Britannicus Sum’), Palmerston defended his decision to dispatch the fleet.

h

The Austrians and Prussians had agreed to follow Russia’s example, but then backed down, fearing it would cause a break with France. They found a compromise, addressing Napoleon as ‘Monsieur mon frère.’

i

The Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen; Lord John Russell, leader of the House of Commons; Foreign Secretary Lord George Clarendon; Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; and Palmerston, at that time Home Secretary.

j

Nesselrode was supported by Baron Meyendorff, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, who reported to the Tsar on 29 November that the ‘little Christian peoples’ would not fight on Russia’s side. They had never received any help from Russia in the past and had been left in ‘a state of military destitution’, unable to resist the Turks (Peter von Meyendorff: Ein russischer Diplomat an den Höfen von Berlin und Wien. Politischer und privater Briefwechsel 1826 – 1863, ed. O. Hoetzsch, 3 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1923), vol. 3).

k

A reference to the expeditionary force of General Oudinot in 1849 – 50 which attacked the anti-papal Roman Republic and brought back Pius IX to Rome. The French troops remained in Rome to protect the Pope until 1870.

l

In the Opium Wars of 1839 – 42.

m

A reference to the Don Pacifico affair.

n

In the battle of Poltava (1709) Peter the Great defeated Sweden and established Russia as a Baltic power.

o