Napoleon seized on this idea. No doubt he imagined that a glorious war would reconcile the nation to the repressive army of his coup d’état. But his enthusiasm was never really shared by the French people, who remained on the whole indifferent to the Holy Lands dispute and the Eastern Question, even after news had reached them of the battle of Sinope. It was Napoleon who talked of following the ‘path of honour’ and fighting against Russian aggression; it was the press that voiced the ‘outrage of the French public’; but according to the reports of the local prefects and procurators, the ordinary people were unmoved. Although the French would fight – and die – in the Crimea in far greater numbers than the British, they were never as excited by the causes of the war as their allies were. If anything, the French were hostile to the idea of a war in which they would be allied with the English, their traditional enemy. It was widely felt that France was being dragged into a war that would be fought for British imperial interests – a theme constantly invoked by the opposition to Napoleon – and that France would pay the price for it. The business world was especially opposed to the idea of war, fearing higher taxes and a drain on the economy. There were predictions that before a year was out any war would become so unpopular that France would be forced to sue for peace.
By the end of January, anti-war feelings had spread to the Emperor’s entourage. At a council of senior officials assembled by Napoleon to discuss Russia’s protest against the arrival of the French and British fleets in the Black Sea on 4 January, two of the Emperor’s closest political allies, Jean Bineau, the Minister of Finance, and Achille Fould, a councillor of state, argued for an accommodation with Russia to avoid sliding into war. They were concerned by the lack of military preparations: the army was not mobilized or ready for a war in the early months of 1854, having been reduced to calm British fears of a French invasion after the coup d’état of December 1851. Bineau even threatened to resign if war broke out, on the grounds that it would become impossible to raise the necessary taxes without major social upheavals (a threat he did not carry out). Napoleon was sufficiently sobered by these dissenting voices to think again about his plans for war and renew the search for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. On 29 January he wrote directly to the Tsar, offering to negotiate a settlement with the mediation of the Austrians and suggesting as the basis of negotiations that the French and British might withdraw their fleets from the Black Sea if the Tsar withdrew his troops from the Danubian principalities. Napoleon’s letter was publicized at once – a move designed to prove to the anxious French public that he was doing everything he could for peace, as he himself confided to Baron Hübner, the Austrian ambassador in Paris.40
Palmerston and his war party kept a close eye on the French. They were worried that Napoleon would try to back out of a military showdown with Russia at the last minute, and used every means at their disposal to stiffen his resolve and undermine his efforts at a diplomatic settlement. It was the British, not the French, who wanted war and pushed hardest for it in the early months of 1854.
Their task was made easier by the Tsar’s intransigence. On 16 February Russia broke off relations with Britain and France, withdrawing its ambassadors from London and Paris. Five days later the Tsar rejected Napoleon’s proposal for a quid pro quo on the Black Sea and the principalities. He proposed instead that the Western fleets should stop the Turks from carrying weapons to Russia’s Black Sea coasts – a clear allusion to the causes of Sinope. On this condition, and on it alone, he offered to negotiate with the Porte’s envoy in St Petersburg. Realizing that his defiant stand invited war, he warned Napoleon that Russia would be the same in 1854 as it had been in 1812.
