CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

TOPIC

EASTERN QUESTION

Submitted To : ………………………..

Submitted By : AMIT DIPANKAR

B.B.A.LLB

2nd semester

1609

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Acknowledgments
As is true of most authors of scholarly works, I owe a great deal of thanks to many people for
assisting me with advice, funding, and guidance in my research and writing. I would like to
thank particularly my LEGAL HISTORY PROFESSOR …………………………………………..
under whose guidance , I structured my project. I owe the present accomplishment of my
project to Dr Manoj Mishra faculty of marketing , who helped me immensely with materials
throughout the project and without whom I couldn‘t have completed it in the present way. I
would also like to extend my gratitude to my college librarian and all those unseen hands that
helped me out at every stage of my project.

THANK YOU,

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Contents

PART I

CHAPTER 1. The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century. Russia and Turkey, 1689-
1792 and the Advent of the Ottomans. Conquests in Europe and the Ottoman Empire : its
Zenith, 1453-1566 Suleiman the Magnificent.
CHAPTER 2. Napoleon and the Near Eastern Problem.
CHAPTER 3. The Powers and the Eastern Question, 1830.
CHAPTER 4. The Balkan States,1878-1898, The Making of Bulgaria and modern Greece
(1832-1898). The Cretan Problem.
CHAPTER 5. The Balkan League and the Balkan Wars.

PART II

CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

7.1 BOOKS

7.2 INTERNET

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INTRODUCTION

"The Eastern Question" revolved around one issue: what should happen to the Balkans if and
when the Ottoman Empire disappeared as the fundamental political fact in the South-eastern
Europe? The Great Powers approached each crisis with the hope of emerging with the
maximum advantage. Sometimes this led one or another to support revolutionary change.
More often, state interests led them to support the status quo. The diplomacy of the Eastern
Question went forward in disregard, and often ignorance, of the wishes of the Balkan
peoples. Because of its traditions and structures, old-style diplomacy was poorly equipped to
deal with popular movements like nationalism. The diplomacy of the Eastern Question began
in the Early Modern Period, before modern nationalism or representative governments.
Diplomats from the Great Powers did not take into account the wishes of their own citizens,
so why listen to Balkan peasants?

Following are some effect of it are explained

1. Treaties: Markowitz and Kuchuk Kainarji : The issues that created the Eastern Question
emerged when the Ottoman high tide in Central Europe began to recede. The failed Ottoman
siege of Vienna in 1683 was the last important Turkish threat to a European Power. Under
the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, the Habsburgs (who were allied with Poland, Russia and
Venice) took control of Hungary (including Croatia), and Russia got part of the Ukraine.
Thereafter, the Ottomans were on the defensive. However, 1699 is a little remote for our
purposes. The modern group of Great Powers had not yet formed at that time (Poland and
Venice were still major forces). Diplomatic practices had not yet assumed their modern form,
involving permanent embassies and specialized ministries. Nor were economic interests
involved in the same way that they came to be after the Industrial Revolution. It is really in
1774 that the elements of the modern Eastern Question come into play. In that year, after
Russia defeated Turkey again the two powers signed the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji. That
treaty altered the Balkan scene in three important ways:

 Russia gained access to the Black Sea coast, so that for the first time Russia
physically impinged on the Turkish heartland, including the Balkans.
 Russian merchant ships got the right to enter the Black Sea, the Bosphorus and the
Dardanelles, Russian merchants got the right to trade in the Ottoman Empire, and
Russia got the right to appoint consular agents inside Turkey.

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  Russia became protector of the Orthodox Christians of Turkey, with special rights in
Wallachia and Moldavia.

These clauses set in train a competition among the Great Powers for influence in Turkey
because no power was willing to permit Russia (or any other) to dominate the vast Ottoman
holdings.

2. The interests of the Great Powers : Besides Turkey, there were six Great Powers during
the late nineteenth century: Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and
Germany. These states followed rather consistent Balkan policies. Some of the Powers
expressed an interest in the Balkan population, but in a crisis each followed its own national
security and defense needs. When Great Powers made compromises, they did so out of a
belief in the tactical value of stability because the outcomes and risks of war were too hard to
predict. States also compromised to retain their position as members of the "Concert of
Europe," the legal concept under which these large states gave themselves the right to settle
matters of war and peace. Policies crafted for such reasons often failed to address the real,
local causes of the repeated Balkan crises which took up so much of Europe's attention in
these years.

3. Russia: Russia tended to be the most visible disturbing agent and was usually the agent of
each new Turkish defeat. Russia began the Early Modern period as the most backward of the
Great Powers but also was the state with the greatest potential to tap new resources and
grow. In Eastern Europe and the Balkans, a succession of states have opposed Russian
interests (or at least perceived Russian interests): the French under Napoleon, then the
British Empire, then the Germans and their allies during the two world wars, and most
recently the United States. Russia's emergence onto the wider world stage coincides with the
emergence of the Eastern Question as a conscious focus of international politics. Under the
1774 Kuchuk Kainarji Treaty, Russia gained access to the north shore of the Black Sea. More
important, the same treaty gave Russia important rights to intercede on behalf of the
Orthodox millet and to conduct commerce within the Ottoman Empire. Most of Russia's
subsequent policies expanded on these two concessions. One aim of Russian policy was
control of local client states. Russian policy toward the Orthodox Christians of the Balkans
involved mixed elements of compassion and self-interest. Russians deplored the abuse of
Balkan fellow Christians and Slavs (the Pan-Slav movement of the 1800s brought forward
similar Russian interests, in a slightly different form). On the other hand, as we saw during
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Serbia's revolution, St. Petersburg abandoned its Balkan proteges when higher policy
required. After autonomous or independent Christian states appeared, Russian policy was
complicated by the need to find reliable client states in the region. When a state like Serbia
fell under Austrian influence, the Russians would switch their support to a regional rival,
such as Bulgaria. Russia had fewer ties to non-Slavic states like Romania: absent Pan-Slav
ties, Russian policy often came across as mere domination, especially when Russia annexed
territory, such as Bessarabia which was seized in 1878 and in 1940.

A second aim of Russian Balkan policy was retention and expansion of rights of navigation
from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Russia wanted full rights not only for its
merchant trade but also for warships to pass through the Straits, while resisting the rights of
other states to send ships (especially warships) into the Black Sea. In general, Russia has had
to accept compromises that allow free traffic for all merchant ships and no traffic for
warships (except the largely harmless Turkish navies).

A third aim of Russian policy, arising from the first two, has been outright physical
possession of Istanbul and the Dardanelles. Annexation of that region would guarantee
passage of the Straits, and make Balkan client states unnecessary. However, that step implied
complete partition of the Turkish Balkans and was never acceptable to the other Powers. This
idea came up in talks with Napoleon in 1807, and was later revived during World War I.
Limited partitions were a staple of Balkan discussions, especially with Austria, but never
came to any concrete result. No other Power would concede such a great prize to the
Russians. With the years of the Cold War behind us, and the spectacle of the collapse of the
Soviet Union, it seems doubtful that Russia could have absorbed half the Balkans
successfully. At the time, however, the difficulty of ruling in the absence of local consent was
never strongly considered. Rather than go into the details of Russian policy in Serbia, Greece
and the other Balkan states, here we can only point to themes. The greatest check to Russian
expansion took place after the Crimean War. By the Treaty of Paris of 1856, Russia lost
much that she had gained. All warships were barred from the Black Sea, and it was opened to
merchant ships of all states: by these actions, Russian lost her special status. All the Great
Powers and not just Russia became the guarantors of the Balkan Christian states like Serbia
and Romania: again, Russia lost a former special right. Above all, losing the war cast Russia
in the role of an outcast state. Russian policy after 1856 aimed at overturning the toughest
clauses of the Paris Treaty, and restoring Russia's status as a full member of the Concert.

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4. The Ottomans: The Ottoman Empire was the weakest of the Great Powers. As an ally
of Britain and France when the 1856 Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War, the Turks
gained a legal status that was beyond their real powers. Ottoman Balkan policy was simple:
to prevent the loss of additional territory in the Balkans. In many instances, the sultan had to
be satisfied with nominal control: the lands of the disobedient ayans like Ali Pasha of
Jannina or the purely legal vassalage of Serbia and Romania come to mind as examples. The
Ottoman regime mistrusted all the other Powers, in part because those states were made up
of infidels and in part from practical experience. However, Russia was clearly Turkey's
greatest enemy because tsarist policies implied or required dismantling the empire. To ward
off Russian threats, Turkey engaged in close cooperation with other states but was always
wary of falling too much under the influence of any one Power. From the time of the Greek
War of Independence up to the 1870s, Britain most often acted as Turkey's guardian. After
1878, Germany largely replaced Britain as an economic and military sponsor. Turkish
relations with the Balkan successor states were uniformly bad, because their interests and
plans involved expansion at Turkish expense .

The struggle between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ot toman Empire is one of the great
dramas in the diplomatic and military history of the early modern period. After the battle of
Mohacs in 1526, which brought the houses of Habsburg and Osman into direct conflict, these
two mighty states engaged in repeated wars to determine which one would ul timately
dominate southeastern Europe. The rivalry was far more than a struggle of great political
powers; it became in the popular mind a contest between Christianity and Islam, between
gods and prophets. The ability of the Habsburgs to halt and eventually to roll back the
advance of the Moslem Turks won for them the title of defenders of Christendom. Without
Habsburg troops forming battle lines and manning fortresses only a few miles east of Vienna,
many villagers and townspeople of central Europe were convinced that hordes of unbelievers
would overrun their homes and property, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Such
an image was popular in early modern Europe, and it has remained so among historians. As
early as 1498, as Hans Sturmberger has pointed out, Emperor Maximilian I listed fear of the
advancing Turks as a major reason for re forming his administration. From that point
onward, al though Habsburg policy was not always trusted by all Chris tians or by all the
political figures of central Europe, the duty of the Habsburgs to defend Christianity was
increasingly em phasized in public ordinances and official statements. In the early eighteenth
century, when Charles VI called upon his lands to recognize the Pragmatic Sanction, he

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stressed that its acceptance was essential because "Against the ever present Turkish might
one can do nothing else than maintain a pow erful central control over the patriarchal
kingdoms and lands."1 In 1732 the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire accepted 4
Introduction the Pragmatic Sanction, in part because Austria represented the "bastion of
Christianity" against the Turks. In his study of the last years of the Empire, Karl Otmar von
Aretin noted that, after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the "true pur pose" of the House of
Habsburg in the eyes of the German princes was to protect them and their lands from the
Turks.2 That "true purpose" underwent its severest test in 1683. The advance on Vienna by
Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha and his mighty army, the ensuing siege, the salvation of the
city, and the flight of the Turkish army constituted a high point in the history of the
Monarchy.3 The strategically significant consequence of the victory, however, was the
subsequent ex pulsion of the Turks from Hungary. So often before, Habsburg victories had
been wasted by an inability or unwilling ness to exploit them, but in 1683 the opportunity was
seized. The war with the Turks continued until 1699 when the Treaty of Carlowitz (Karlowitz,
Sremski Karlovci) confirmed the Habsburg triumph. Turkish Hungary and Transylvania, with
the exception of the small region in the south known as the Banat of Timi§oara (Temesvar),
came under the scepter of the Habsburgs. More importantly, the treaty initiated significant
changes in the atmosphere of Austro-Turkish relations. For two centuries the Habsburgs and
their subjects had stood in fear of the Turks; henceforth the Turks expressed a growing dread
of the Habsburgs. By the opening of the eighteenth century, the Austrians for the first time in
almost two hundred years could feel some confidence in their military superiority over their
dangerous foe. Although relations remained somewhat strained, the Austrians could find
consolation in the great victories achieved between 1683 and 1699, victories that would
surely make the Sublime Porte reluctant to take up arms soon without good cause or serious
provocation. Within fifteen years of the Treaty of Carlowitz, the Austrians came to believe
that the Ottoman state had in fact grown even weaker than they had imagined. In 1715 an
Austrian envoy in Constantinople in formed Vienna that Turkey had become so enfeebled that
a Introduction 5 Habsburg army could march with ease to the Ottoman capital and, in the
process, expel the Turks from Europe altogether.

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I. THE EASTERN QUESTION IN THE EIGHEENTH
CENTURY AND THE ADVENT OF THE OTTOMAS [1689-
1792],[1453-1566]

The importance of Prince KlemensWenzel Lothar Nepomuk von Metternich- Winneburg for
19th century European history can hardly be denied, and numerous books and articles
dedicated to this man and his diplomatic career would seem to show that his significance has
been given due attention. This appearance is, however, deceptive. A considerable number of
these works are biographies of a merely popular nature or brief surveys offering but a
superficial overview of the relevant topics, often based upon a rather limited number of
sources and negatively influenced by the personal feelings of their authors towards
Metternich, regardless of whether their biases were positive or negative. Despite the fact that
Metternich played a significant role in European diplomacy from 1809 to 1848, some of his
activities in international relations have been insufficiently researched, and this is
particularly evident for the period after 1822 and especially after 1830. It is true that his
influence decreased after the end of the congress era, but he undoubtedly remained an
important player on the diplomatic chessboard. Consequently, more than 150 years after
Metternich‘s death in 1859, thorough and impartial research on this statesman and his time
is still needed. This book seeks to partly rectify this omission and, with an analysis of
Metternich‘s Near Eastern policy, add more detail to the mosaic of the diplomatic history of
his period. It attempts to present Metternich‘s policy within the broader scope of the Eastern
Question and introduce the subject as a complex issue of not only diplomatic but also
economic, military, religious and social history.
The Eastern Question, the question that can be briefly explained as what should become of
the Ottoman Empire, was an important part of European politics from the late 18th to the
early 20th century and it is also one of the crucial issues of Metternich‘s era. Although at that
time no Great Power wanted to destroy the Ottoman Empire, their geopolitical, economic
and even prestigious interests in south-eastern Europe, North Africa, the eastern
Mediterranean and the Black Sea significantly shaped not only the development of these
parts of the world but also strongly affected the relations among the Great Powers
themselves, thus having a significant impact on the history of both European as well as non-
European regions. The denomination of this important question as ―Eastern‖ results from
the fact that this term originated in Europe, more accurately in Western Europe, whose

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populations usually viewed the Ottoman Empire a remote – geographically as well as
culturally – country in the East, consequently the Near East/Levant/Orient. Metternich also
understood the Ottoman Empire with regard to the term ―East‖ in this way, and the fact that
he saw in this not only a geographical but also cultural boundary is very important because
the term East/Levant/Orient was used by him for the whole of the Ottoman Empire, whose
territory he never entered, including its Balkan domains, which were for him, a man born
in the Rhineland deeply rooted in Western civilisation and 18th century enlightenment, as
alien as those in Asia or Africa. This outlook is clearly evident not only from the studied
documents but also from his often declared statement, probably not greatly exaggerated from
his point of view, that he regarded the garden on the road leading from Vienna to Pressburg,
owned by the House of Schwarzenberg and divided by the frontier between Austria and
Hungary as ―the place where Europe ends and Asia begins‖1.Consequently, when Metternich
talked about affairs as Eastern/Oriental, he meant any of the affairs concerning the Ottoman
Empire.
The period covered in this book is from the beginning of the Greek insurrection against
Ottoman rule in 1821 to the end of the second Turko-Egyptian crisis in 1841. These twenty
years were chosen because the most important affairs of the Eastern Question in
Metternich‘s era occurred during these two decades. The preceding Serbian uprising was
undeniably of some importance to Austria, and it occupied Metternich after his accession to
the helm of the Austrian foreign ministry in 1809, but first, it was a matter of far less
significance for European politics than later incidents like the Greekuprising or two Turko-
Egyptian crises, and second, Austria‘s policy towards the Serbian uprising has already been
thoroughly researched by Ulrike Tischler2 t. The same applies for the period from 1841 to
Metternich‘s political downfall seven years later when no incident in the Balkans or the
Levant raised such serious issues for the Great Powers as those in the two preceding
decades. Their involvement in the Mount Lebanon affairs launched in 1840 surely was of
some importance but it has been adequately researched by Caesar E. Farah3 .

1
Langsdorff to sainte-aulaire, Vienna, 6 May 1836,AMAE,CP,Autriche 423
According to a similar story, Metternich was said to claim that the Orient began
at the Landstrasse leading out from Vienna. L. Wolff, ―‗Kennst du das Land?‘
The Uncertainty of Galicia in the Age of Metternich and Fredro,‖ SR 67, 2008, 2,
p. 294.
2
U. Tischler, Die habsburgische Politik gegen¨uber den Serben und Montenegrinern
1791–1822, M¨unchen 2000.
3
C. E. Farah, The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon, 1830–1861,
London, New York 2000.

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This volume is strictly limited to the history of the Eastern Question from Austria‘s point of
view, it does not examine the internal history of the Ottoman Empire or its relations with all
European Powers, and although Austria‘s involvement in the Near Eastern affairs must
naturally be put into the wider context of European history, this book is not and cannot be a
comprehensive survey of Metternich‘s entire diplomacy, including his activities in Germany
or Italy. The choice of the Near East does not imply that this area was of more significance
than the two previously mentioned regions, which of course it was not, nor that Austria
played the most important role of all the Great Powers in the Eastern Question, which it
definitely did not, but it should prove that for the Danube Monarchy and Metternich himself
the importance of the Ottoman Empire as well as the politics connected with its decay have
generally been underestimated and that much remains to be discovered with regard to
Metternich‘s character and activities in general. The appropriate question is not whether the
areas of German Confederation and the Apennines were of greater importance for
Metternich‘s Austria but whether the Ottoman Empire was actually of far less importance for
the Central European Power. The significance of this question becomes apparent when one
considers that Austria was connected to the Ottoman Empire by the longest frontier of all
European countries and this border was also the longest of all Austria‘s neighbours. The
book should thus also contribute tothe research on Austrian as well as Central European
history from the ―south-eastern point of view‖. It is my intent to offer an in-depth analysis
probably not entirely in compliance with the latest fashion of broad theorisation of
diplomatic frameworks, standards and rules, as for example American historian Paul W.
Schroeder or German historian Matthias Schulz did,4 but perhaps making it possible to refute
the misinterpretations, deep rooted myths and some prejudices concerning not only
Metternich‘s diplomacy but also his personality. This does not mean that my purpose is to
glorify this man and repudiate all his critics. In contrast to Paul W. Schroeder, as he has
mentioned in the introduction of his book on Metternich, I did not start my research with any
supposition that the revisionist, meaning positive, views on Metternich are correct.5 To be
frank, my original interest focused on Austria‘s activities in the Levant and not at all on
Metternich. I was not among his admirers then and I still do not consider myself one of them.
In the course of time, however, through the study of relevant archival sources, I started to

4
P. W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, Oxford
1996; M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis: Das Europ¨aische Konzert der Großm¨achte
als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860, M¨unchen 2009.
5
P. W. Schroeder, Metternich‘s Diplomacy at Its Zenith, 1820–1823, New York
1962, p. x.

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better understand this man and what motivated him, and I dare say that I gradually
discovered a considerable number of incorrect statements and appraisals made by historians
in the past. This particularly happened at the moment when I went through the documents
covering a longer time span, which helped me to better, and I hope more correctly, evaluate
Metternich‘s policy, its motivations and goals. For this reason, the characteristics of my
findings approach more closely those of Alan J. Reinerman, Ulrike Tischler, and particularly
Wolfram Siemann6 , all of them having dealt with or still dealing with Metternich in a wider
timeframe, than to the general views of Paul W. Schroeder, who focused intently on
Metternich‘s diplomacy within only a short period.7
The picture of Metternich that materialised after the end of my research is a portrait of a man
who was conservative, but this term, which is frequently used in the literature about him,
does not adequately explain his policy and leads to the assumption that his diplomacy was
dogmatic and unrealistic. What I want to do with this book is to contribute to the re-
evaluation of Metternich and his time; it is the fact that his policy, at least during the given
period of 1821–1841 and in relation to the Eastern Question, was conservative as well as
rather realistic and so to speak pragmatic, based upon his rational and usually unbelievably
accurate analysis of events and his profound knowledge of facts and people; it is even
possible to claim that in many respects his opinions relating to Near Eastern affairs were
quite rational and his corresponding policy very consistent and actually not duplicitous – at
least not to the degree generally attributed to him. Furthermore, the following chapters
should demonstrate that the vast regions of the Ottoman Empire constituted a politically and
economically important area for the Danube Monarchy; and although Metternich would
definitely have liked to avoid dealing with Ottoman affairs, he was unable to do so and not
only dealt with them but also paid remarkable attention to various problems resulting from
the decay of the sultan‘s weak empire. I would dare to go so far as to claim that no other
member of the European political and diplomatic elites of the period under research paid so
much attention to the internal situation of the Ottoman Empire as Metternich did, but of
course this is always hard to evaluate. Another objective of the presented study is to show
that Metternich‘s views and steps in the Eastern Question in the 1830s were not actually anti-
Russian but markedly anti-French and that Austria‘s relations with Russia in the Ottoman

6
A. J. Reinerman, ―Metternich and Reform: The Case of the Papal State, 1814–
1848,‖ JMH 42, 1970, 4, pp. 526–527; W. Siemann, Metternich: Staatsmann zwischen
Restauration und Moderne, M¨unchen 2010.
7
Schroeder, Metternich‘s Diplomacy, p. 266.

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affairs during the same decade were surprisingly good because the two Powers‘ interests in
the Ottoman Empire were identical, they needed each other‘s support in the West as well as
in the East and it can be said that a specific sort of an ―entente cordial‖ existed between
them. And last but not at least, with this book I will attempt to refute the opinion advocated by
the ―apostles‖ of structural history in the last several decades that after 1815 an important
transformation in European politics occurred and that the Great Powers limited their self-
serving ambitions with their alleged sense of an all-European responsibility. I originally did
not plan to deal with this subject, but since a correct assessment of European politics in the
so-called Pre- March period (Vorm¨arz ) is naturally crucial for a correct evaluation of
Metternich‘s role in it and because my own research and conclusions persuaded me that the
―transformation theory‖ is for the most part entirely baseless and distorts the real image of
European politics, the character of which did not significantly differ from the periods before
1815 and after 1848, the Eastern Question will also serve in this book as a model example for
the re-evaluation of the motivations behind the Great Powers‘ conduct and Metternich‘s
position in the diplomatic relations still mostly shaped by the egoistic interests of their
protagonists. Furthermore, if in this generally predatory world someone was actually
motivated by any principles surpassing simple national or power-hungry interests in
determining his policy, then it is difficult to see a better candidate than Metternich. It does
not mean that I will try to enter into the dispute as to whether Metternich was more an
Austrian or a European statesman, in other words whether his steps were directed more by
Austrian or European interests, simply because it is impossible to find a definite answer when
the crucial question can never be clearly defined: what Europe‘s interest actually was – the
preservation of general peace, or the spread of liberalism, or the establishment of national
states? What I want to prove is the fact that Metternich, more than any of his allies or
opponents on the diplomatic chessboard, not only wanted to maintain the existence of the
Ottoman Empire and never deviated from pursuing this goal, but that he also maintained a
highly consistent politico-legal strategy in his Near Eastern policy with the aim of applying
the rules shaping the relations among the European countries, or at least the rules he wished
to apply to them, to their relations with the Ottoman Empire and through his willingness to
observe these rules to ensure not only the political status quo beyond Austria‘s south-eastern
border but also to prevent the rivalry between the European Powers in the regions beyond it
from destabilising their own relations and thereby threatening the general peace of Europe.

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II. NAPOLEON AND THE NEAR EASTERN PROBLEM

The Treaty of Jassy closed one important chapter in the history of the Eastern Question .The
next open with the advent of Napoleon. By the year 1797 he had begun to arrive not only in a
military but in a political sense. During the five years which elapsed between the Treaty of
Jassy (1792) and that of Campo Formio the Eastern Question, as in this work we understand
the term, was permitted to rest. This brief interval of repose was due to several causes, but
chiefly to the fact that the year which saw the conclusion of the war between Russia and
Turkey witnessed the opening of the struggle between the German Powers and the French
Revolution.
Catherine‘s ambition in regard to Poland had been whetted rather than sated by the partition
of 1772 But between 1772 and 1792 she was as we have seen, busy elsewhere.Poland seized
the opportunity to put what remained of its house in oreder –the last thing desired by
Catherine. But in 1792 her chance came. She had been ‗cudgelling her brains to urge the
Courts of Vienna and Berlin to busy themselves with the affairs of France' so that she might
liave Mier own elbows free'. The German Courts played her game for her, and by the summer
of 1792 her elbows were free. In 1793 the second partition of Poland was carried out.
Prussia and Russia divided the spoil Austria got nothing. But in the third and final partition
of 1795 Austria was admitted to a share. In the same year Prussia concluded peace with
France at the expense of the empire ; two years later Austria followed suit. Prussia had made
her peace with the Directory. With Austria the peace was negotiated directly by the young
general who had commanded the French army in the great campaign of 1796-7. And General
Bonaparte had already begun to comport himself as an independent conqueror. 'Do you
suppose', said he to Miot de M^lito, 'that I have been winning victories in Italy to enhance the
glory of the lawyers of the Directory—Barras and Carnot? Do you suppose that I mean to
establish the Republic more securely The nation wants a chief, a supreme head covered with
glory.' In Bonaparte's view they had not very far to look for him. Nor was the chief in any
doubt as to his real antagonist. From the outset his eyes were fixed upon England, and upon
England not merely or mainly as a unit in the European polity, but as a world-power, and
above all as an Oriental power.
Before the Treaty of Campo Formio was actually signed Bonaparte had written to the
Directors (August 16,1797). ‗Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia are of more interest to us than all
Italy.' ' Corfu and Zante ', he said to Talleyrand, ' make us masters both of the Adriatic and of

P a g e | 14
the Levant. It is useless to try to maintain the Turkish Empire ; we shall see its downfall in
our lifetime. The occupation of the Ionian Isles will put us in a position to support it or to
secure a share of it for ourselves.' Amid the much more resounding advantages secured to
France in 1797—Belgium, the Rhine frontier, and so on—little significance was attached to
the acquisition of these islands. But Bonaparte was looking ahead. To him they were all
important. Might they not serve as stepping stones to Egypt.' To Choiseiil Egypt had seemed
the obvious compensation for the loss of the French Empire in India. Napoleon regarded the
occupation of the first as a necessary preliminary to the recovery of the second. Volney,
whose book, Les Ruines, had a powerful influence upon him, had written in 1788, 'Par
I'Egypte nous toucherons k I'lnde ; nous retablirons I'ancienne circulation par Suez, et nous
ferons deserter la route du cap de Bonne-Esp^rance.' Nor was Napoleon without warrant
from his nominal masters. On October 23, 1797, the Directors had indicted an elaborate
dispatch commending to his consideration the position of Turkey, the interests of French
commerce in the Levant, and indicating the importance they attached to the Ionian Isles and
Malta.^ The views of the Directors coincided with his own. It is safe to assume that if they
had not done so they would not have found an agent in General Bonaparte. But alike to the
Republicans and to the future emperor they came as a heritage from the Ancien Regime.
French policy in the Near East has been, as we have repeatedly seen, singularly consistent.
So far as Napoleon initiated a new departure, it was only in the boldness and originality with
which he applied traditional principles to a new situation.
In the summer of 1797 Napoleon had already made overtures to the Mainotes, the Greeks,
and the Pashas of Janina, Scutari, and Bosnia. In regard to the Greeks of the Morea he was
particularly solicitous. ' Be careful ', he wrote to General Gentili, whom he sent to occupy the
Ionian Isles, ' in issuing your proclamations to make plenty of reference to the Greeks, to
Athens, and Sparta.' He himself addressed the Mainotes as ' worthy descendants of the
Spartans who alone among the ancient Greeks know the secret of preservingpolitical liberty '.
But it was on Egypt that his attention was really concentrated, and on Egypt mainly as a
means to the overthrow of the Empire of England. Talleyrand represented his views to the
Directory : ' Our war with this Power (England) represents the most favourable opportunity
for the invasion of Egypt. Threatened by an imminent landing onher shores she will not
desert her coasts to prevent our enterprise (in Egypt). This further offers us a possible chance
of driving the English out of India by sending thither 15,000 troops from Cairo via Suez.'8

8
Jonquiere, VExpMition d'£gypte, i. 161 (cited by Foiirnier).

P a g e | 15
It was, however, to the command of the Army of England that Bonaparte was gazetted in
November, 1797. He accepted it not without an arriere-jyensee. 'This little Europe', he said to
Bourrienne, ' offers too contracted a field. One must go to the East to gain power and
greatness. Europe is a mere mole-hill ; it is only in the East, where there are 600,000,000 of
human beings, that there have ever been vast empires and mighty revolutions. I am willing to
inspect the northern coast to see what can be done. But if, as I fear, the success of a landing
in England should appear doubtful, 1 shall make my Army of England the Army of the East
and go to Egypt9.
A visit to the northern coast confirmed his view that the blow against England should be
struck in Egypt. The French navy was not in a condition to attempt direct invasion, Besides,
he had his own career to consider. He must 'keep his glory warm', and that was not to be in
Europe. He persuaded the Directors to his views, and in April, 1798, he was nominated to the
command of the army of the East. His instructions, drafted by himself, ordered him to take
Malta and Egypt, cut a channel through the Isthmus of Suez, and make France mistress of the
Red Sea, maintaining as far as possible good relations with the Turks and their Sultan. But
the supreme object of the expedition was never to be lost sight of. ' You ', he said to his troops
as they embarked at Toulon, ' are a wing of the Army of England.' The preparations for the
expedition were made with a thoroughness which we have been too apt of late to associate
with the Teutonic rather than the Latin genius. On Napoleon's staff were at least a dozen
generals who subsequently attained renown ; but not generals only. Egypt was to be
transformed under French rule ; the desert was to be made to blossom as the rose. To this
end Napoleon took with him Berthollet, the great chemist, Monge, the mathematician,
engineers, architects, archaeologists, and historians. The expedition sailed from Toulon on
May 19, 1798. Nelson had been closely watching the port, though quite ignorant of
Napoleon's destination. But he was driven out to sea by a storm, and before he could get back
the bird had flown. Meanwhile, Napoleon occupied JVIalta without resistance from
the Knights of St. John (June 13) ; the French troops landed in Egypt on July 1 ; took
Alexandria on the 2nd, fought and won the battle of the Pyramids on the 21st, and on the next
day occupied Cairo. Three weeks had sufficed for the conquest of Lower Egypt. But Nelson
and the English fleet, though successfully eluded during the voyage, were on Napoleon's
track, and on the 1st of August they came up with the French fleet lying in Aboukir Bay, and,
by a manoeuvre conceived with great skill and executed Avith superb courage, they

9
I combine two separate conversations, both with Bourrienne, but, of
course, without altering the sense and merely for the sake of brevity.

P a g e | 16
succeeded in completely annihilating it. Nelson's victory of the Nile rendered Napoleon's
position in Egypt exceedingly precarious. Cut off" from his base, deprived of the means of
transport and supply, a lesser man would have deemed it desperate. Napoleon was only
stimulated to fresh efforts. The attack upon Egypt was, as we have seen, directed primarily
against England. But the lord of Egypt was the Sultan, and to him the French conquest was
both insulting and damaging. Encouraged by Nelson's success Sultan Selim plucked up
courage to declare war upon France on September 1, and prepared to reconquer his lost
province. Napoleon thereupon determined to take the offensive in Syria. He took by assault El
Arisch, Gaza, and Jaffa, laid siege to Acre,(March, 1799), and on April 16 inflicted a
crushing defeat upon the Turks at Mount Tabor.
Acre, thanks to the support of the English fleet under Sir Sydney Smith, sustained its
reputation for impregnability ; the sufferings of Napoleon's army were intense ; their general,
reluctantly resigning his dream of an advance through Asia Minor upon Constantinople, was
compelled to withdraw to Egypt. Instead of conquermg Constantinople, and from
Constantinople taking his European enemies in the rear, he found himself obliged to defend
his newly conquered province against the assault of its legitimate sovereign. Convoyed by the
English fleet a Turkish expedition reached Egypt in July, but Napoleon flung himself upon
them and drove them headlong into the sea (July 25). This second battle of Aboukir firmly
established Napoleon's supremacy in Egypt. But the victory, though militarily complete, was
politically barren. News from France convinced Napoleon that the pear was at last ripe, and
that it must be picked in Paris. Precisely a month after his victory over the Turks at Aboukir
he embarked with great secrecy at Alexandria, leaving his army under the command of
Kleber. The Mediterranean was carefully patrolled by the English fleet, but Napoleon
managed to elude it, landed at Frejus on October 9, and precisely a month later (18th
Brumaire) effected the coup d'4tat which made him, at a single blow, master of France.

P a g e | 17
IV. The Powers and the Eastern Question, 1830-1841. Mehemet Ali of Egypt.

It is proverbially dangerous in public affairs to confer a favour ; it is even more dangerous to

accept one. Never has there been a more apt illustration of this truth than that afforded by the
curious phase of the Eastern Question which it is the purpose of this chapter to disclose.Had
it not been for the intervention of the Powers, Mehemet Ali of Egypt and Ibrahim Pasha
would indubitably have rescued the Ottoman Empire from imminent dismember-ment. Such a
service it was difficult for the recipient to requite, and still more difficult to forgive. Mehemet
Ali, on his part, was not disposed to underrate the obligations under Avhich he had placed
his suzerain, and the cession of Crete seemed to him a wholly inadequate reward. In the
disgust thus engendered we have one of the clues to the\ intricacies of the period which
intervened between the Treaty of Adrianople and the Treaty of London of 1841. Recent
events had, moreover, revealed the weakness, military, naval, and political, of the Ottoman
Empire. If Greece, an integi'al part of his European dominions, could so easily be detached
from the sceptre of the Sultan, why not other parts of the empire, connected with
Constantinople by a looser tie ? Algiers, which still acknowledged the titular sovereignty of
the Sultan, had been seized in 1830 by the French, who had proclaimed their purpose to
deliver that promising land from the yoke of the Ottoman Sultan. If Algiers, why not other
parts of Africa or of Asia ? The extraordinary success already achieved by Mehemet Ali
might well inspire that brilliant barbarian—half an illiterate savage, half a consummate
statesman, wholly a genius—with ambitions even more far reaching. Born in 1769 at Kavala,
a small seaport in eastern Macedonia, Mehemet Ali Avas, like Ali Pasha of Janina, by race
an Albanian. The son of a peasant cultivator he was himself a small trader, but Napoleon's
invasion of Egypt in 1798 gave him his chance of carving out a career for himself. It was not
neglected. As second-in-command of a regiment of Albanian irregulars, he took part in the
Turkish expedition to Egypt, which began and ended so disastrously with the battle of
Aboukir. Driven into the sea with his comrades he was picked up by the gig of the English
admiral. Sir Sydney Smith, and two years later (1801) he returned to Egypt in command of
his regiment.
Mehemet Ali was greatly impressed by the military superiority of troops trained on European
models, and still more impressed of the career open, in such times, to a man of genius like
Napoleon or himself. After the successive evacuations of the French and English Egypt was

P a g e | 18
in a terrible condition of anarchy. The Mameluke Beys were as independent of their suzerain
the Sultan as they were impotent to rule the Egyptians.

P a g e | 19
V. The Balkan League and the Balkan Wars.

' These newly emancipated races want to breathe free air and not through Russian
nostrils.'— Sir William White (1885). 'A Bulgaria, friendly to the Porte, and jealous of
foreign influence, would be a far surer bulwark against foreign aggression than two
Bulgarias, severed in administration, but united in considering the Porte as the only obstacle
to their national development.' Lord Salisbury (Dec. 23, 1885). ' It is next to impossible that
the Powers of Christendom can permit the Turk, however triumphant, to cast his yoke again
over the necks of any emancipated Provincials. There is much reason to think that a chain of
autonomous States, though still, perhaps, tributary to the Sultan, might be extended from the
Black Sea to the Adriatic with advantage to that potentate himself. But, at all events, the very
idea of reinstating any amount of Turkish misgovemment in places once cleared of it is
simply revolting. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. ' Greece wants something more than the rules of
political procedure that are embodied in written constitutions in order to infuse better moral
principles among her people whose social system has been corrupted by long ages of
national servitude until the people undergo a moral change as well as the government,
national progress must be slow, and the surest pledges for the enjoyment of true liberty will
be wanting.' Dr. George Finlay. ' Crete is an unexplored paradise in ruins, a political
volcano in chronic activity, a theatre on the boards of which rapine, arson, murder, and all
manner of diabolical crimes are daily rehearsed for the peace, if not the delectation, of the
Great Powers of peace-loving Christendom. Truly this is far and away the most grotesque
political spectacle of the nineteenth century.'-E. J. Dillon. To pass from the Congress of
Berlin to the early struggles Balof the reborn Balkan States means more than a change of
temperature and environment. It involves an abrupt transition from drab prose to highly
coloured romance ; from a problem play to transpontine melodrama ; from the traditional
methods of nineteenth century diplomacy to those of primitive political society. Transported
to the Balkans we are in the midst of boideversements and vicissitudes, political and personal
; sudden elevations ; sudden falls ;democratic constitutions and autocratic cot(2JS d'etat ;
plotting and counterplotting ; the hero of yesterday, the villain of to-day, and again the hero
of to-morrow ; abductions, abdications, and assassinations ; the formation and dissolution of
parties ; a strange medley of chivalry and baseness ; of tragedy and comedy ; of
obscurantism and progress.

P a g e | 20
The Treaty of Berlin meant the end of ' Turkey in Europe' as term had been understood by
geographers for the last four hundred years. The place of the provinces of the " Ottoman
Empire is now taken by independent, or virtually independent. States : Greece, Roumania,
Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. But although the Ottoman Empire is broken and crippled
the new States are by no means fully fashioned. The garment woven at Berlin had many
ragged edges. Greece got nothing at the moment, and had to wait three years before even a
portion of her claims upon Thessaly and Epirus were conceded ; Crete remained in Turkish
hands for another generation. Serbia was profoundly dissatisfied and with reason : the
arrangement proposed at San Stefano would have divided the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar between
herself and the sister State of Montenegro, thus bringing the two Slav States into immediate
contact, and giving Serbia indirect access, through Montenegro, to the Adriatic. The crafty
restoration of the Sanjak to Turkey ; the retention of the great harbour of the Bocche di
Cattaro by Austria, and the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina inflicted a
series of terrible blows upon the aspirations of the Southern Slavs, and kept open sores which
might have been healed. The Habsburgs were, however, far too clever to allow their hopes
of access to the Aegean to be frustrated by the interposition of a compact Jugo-Slav State,
whether that State was unitary or federal. The disappointment of Serbia was the immediate
disappointment of Montenegro, and ultimately the disappointment of Bosnia and the
Herzegovina.
Of the cruel blow to the legitimate hopes of Roumania enough, Butthe fatal character of the
bhmder then committed by Russia, Avjthout protest, be it added, from any of the Powers,
cannot be too strongly emphasized. Most significant of all, however, was the partition of the
proposed Bulgaria. That partition not only served to keep the Balkans in ferment for the next
thirty years but introduced into European diplomacy, or at least into its vocabulary, a new
problem, that of ' Macedonia '. Whether Serbia and Greece would or could have acquiesced
in the San Stefano settlement is a question which must be reserved for subsequent discussion
but it is obvious that if Lord Beaconsfield had not torn that treaty into shreds the Macedonian
problem would never have emerged in the shape with which the present generation is
familiar. The Greater Bulgaria might ultimately have raised as many problems as it solved;
but those problems would have been approached from a different angle and might have been
solved with less friction and more satisfactory results. As things were, it was upon the
fortunes of Bulgaria that the attention not merely of the Balkans but of Europe at large was
concentrated during the twenty years succeeding the Congress of Berlin. In 1878 the Russian
army was in occupation of the principality which Russian diplomacy proposed to create.
P a g e | 21
The plans of the future edifice had been, it is true, profoundly modified at Berlin, but the task
of executing them was committed to Russia. The first business Avas to provide the new
principality with a constitution. Accordhig to the Treaty of Berlin the ' Organic Law of the
Principality ' was to be drawn up 'before the election of the Prince' by an assembly of
notables of Bulgaria convoked at Tirnovo ; particular regard was to be paid to the rights and
interests of the Turkish, Roumanian, Greek, or other populations, where these were
intermixed with Bulgarians, and there was to be absolute equality between difierent religious
creeds and confessions. Until the completion of the Organic Law the principality was
provisionally administered by a Russian Commissary ,assisted by a Turkish Commissary and
Consuls delegated ad hoc by the Powers. The Constituent Assembly, elected in December
1878, met on February 26, 1879, and duly drafted an Organic Law which was adopted on
April 28. Mainly the work of the fii'st ruler of the independent Bulgaria, Petko Karaveloff,'
10
this Law was amended in 1893 and again in 1911, but neither in its original nor amended
form has it worked satisfactorily. It was said of modern Itah , perhaps with truth, that she
was made too quickly. The saying is certainly true of Bulgaria. Her young men and old men
were alike in a hurry. Without any training whatever in the most difficult of all political arts,
that of self-government, Bulgaria adopted a form of constitution which presupposed a long
political apprenticeship. Karaveloff was a sincere patriot, but he belonged to the worst type
of academic radicals. The constitution reflected, in every clause, the work of the doctrinaire.
The Legislature was to consist of a Single Chamber, the Sobranje or National Assembly ; any
man over thirty years of age who could read and write, unless he were a clergyman,
a soldier on active service, or had been deprived of civil rights, was eligible for election to it
all members were to be paid ; the Assembly Avas to be elected on the basis of universal
manhood suffrage, and each electoral district was to consist of 20,000 votei-s who were to
return one member ; unless dissolved by the prince (now the king) the Assembly was to sit for
four years. Questions concerning the acquisition or cession of territory, a vacancy of the
crown, regencies and constitutional revision were to be reserved from the competence of the
ordinary Sobranje and to be referred to a Grand Sobranje, elected in the same manner by the
same people but in double strength. The Executive was entrusted to a Council of eight
ministers, to be nominated by the prince (king), but responsible to the Assembly11.Had this
constitution been the outcome of a slow political evolution there would have been little to be
said against it. Imposed upon a people totally inexperienced, it proved, as the sequel will

10
For an admirable portrait see Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula pp. 259 sq.
11
For convenience the subsequent amendments are incorporated

P a g e | 22
show, unworkable. Having drafted the Organic Law the Assembly proceeded to the election
of a prince. The Treaty of Berlin had provided that he was to be 'freely elected by the
population, and confirmed by the Porte with the assent of the Powers, but no member of the
reigning dynasty of a Great Power was to be eligible. The Tsar recommended and the
Assembly elected (April 29, 1879) Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a scion, by a morganatic
marriage, of the House of Darmstadt, a nephew by marriage of the Tsar, and an officer in the
Prussian army. Born in 1857 Prince Alexander was at this time a young Prince man of
twenty-two, of fine presence, and with plenty of character and brains. A close observer
described him as a wise statesman, a brave soldier, a remarkable man in every
respect'.12The description was perhaps partial, but the choice was unquestionably a good
one, and if Prince Alexander had had a fair chance he would probably have done a great
work for his adopted country. He was, however, hampered from the outset on the one hand by
the jealousy and arrogance of the Russian officials by whom he was at first surrounded, and
on the other by the opposition of the Sobranje, which was elected under the ridiculous
provisions of the Organic Law. Out of 170 members elected to the first Sobranje in 1879 The
not more than thirty were supporters of the ministers appointed by the prince, and after a
session which lasted only ten days it was dissolved. A second Sobranje, elected in 1880, was
even less favourable to the prince and his ministers. The appointment of a new ministry,
under the Russophil radicals Zankoff" and Karavelofl", temporarily eased the situation, but
in May, 1881, the prince suspended the Organic Law, and in July a new Assembly ratified his
coup d'etat and conferred upon him extraordinary powers for a period of seven years. In
September, 1883, however, the prince was compelled by pressure from St. Petersburg to re-
establish the abrogated constitution. The new Tsar, Alexander III13was much less friendly
than his father to the Prince of Bulgaria, and from this time onwards there was more or less
avowed hostility between St. Petersburg and Sofia.

12
Majoi" A. von Huhn, The Struggle of the Bulgarians for Independence (1886), p. 6.
13
Succeeded in 1881 on the assassination of Tsar Alexander 11.

P a g e | 23
CONCLUSION

Metternich paid considerable attention to events beyond Austria‘s south-eastern frontier. His
voluminous correspondence on Near Eastern affairs related to not only politics at the highest
level but also to economics, religion and social matters, his frequent discussions about these
topics with Austrian as well as foreign diplomats, monarchs, military officers, travellers and
orientalists, his reading of numerous books and newspaper articles on the same topics and,
finally, his practical steps prove that he considered not only Germany and Italy but also the
Ottoman Empire as areas of enormous importance for the Austrian Empire. Consequently, it
is necessary to refute the widespread claim that his perception of the world was merely
directed to the West and that he was not interested in the situation in the Near East.14 One
could admit that Metternich was culturally inclined to the West and not at all to the East and
this would be entirely correct because he had no personal sympathy for the Levant, but this
had no significant influence on his diplomacy, and he still attentively observed events in the
Balkans to a similar extent as he did in other European regions bordering on Austria. Alan
Palmer claims that Metternich disliked dealing with the affairs of the Ottoman Empire
because Austria had nothing to gain in this area,15 and with the exception of the sphere of
commercial enterprise, which was of extreme importance to Austria, he is right, but one must
realise that first, despite this fact Metternich felt obliged to deal with this issue and he
therefore paid considerable attention to affairs relating to it, and second, the prince would
have definitely been happy if he had not had to solve any problems, including those in the
Apennines, the German Confederation or in any other part of the more or less distant world.
He also dealt with problems in Italy or Germany not because he wanted to or because he
could gain much there but because he had to, and this also holds for the Near East. It is also
true that both areas in the West were regarded as traditional spheres of Austria‘s interests,
but so were the Balkans, which were of crucial geopolitical and economic importance for the
Danube Monarchy. Metternich of course did not actively intervene in the Near East as often
as in the West, but this was due to the fact that nations in the former were governed by one
monarch usually not requesting foreign assistance in his internal affairs, whereas the latter
was full of small independent states whose rulers often asked for Austria‘s diplomatic or even
military support against revolutionary threats. Moreover, when Metternich found it necessary
14
The correct opinion that Metternich was very interested in Near Eastern affairs, and of course
those concerning the Balkans in particular, was already stated by Ulrike Tischler, p. 107.
15
Palmer, p. 258.

P a g e | 24
to intervene in the Ottoman Empire, he did so. For example, he contemplated Austria‘s
military intervention in Serbia in 1810 and he sent Austrian forces into the eastern
Mediterranean to protect Austria‘s economic interests against Greek piracy in the 1820s or
to assist the sultan against Mohammed Ali in 1840. It is thus possible to say that Austria
followed a more active policy in the German Confederation and Italy than in the Balkans as
well as the Near East in general, but it is hardly possible to maintain that it remained
inactive in the affairs of the latter as, for example, did French historian Ren´e Albrecht-
Carri´e: ―It will be noted, in the case of the Greek episode, that Austria played a surprisingly
inactive role despite her major interest in Ottoman affairs. This tendency on Austria‘s part to
remain in the background where Eastern affairs were concerned and to let others take the
initiative, leaving them to court her assistance in the uncertainty of what she might elect to
do, is characteristic of her Eastern policy; it will appear on more than one occasion,
generally to the annoyance of all. The reason for it lay in part at least in the fact that the East
held second priority of interest for Austria who looked upon Central Europe as the prime
concern of her policy. Not until her eviction from Italy and from Germany was she to put
first emphasis on the Near East.‘16 This opinion results more from the fact that an enormous
number of documents proving the contrary have generally remained unexplored than the
actual circumstances. Metternich not only did not consider the Near East to be of secondary
importance, but he was also in no way inclined to leave the initiative regarding the region to
others. He never surrendered the Balkans to Russia‘s exclusive supremacy and was certainly
not willing to do so voluntarily; he never regarded the Ottoman Empire as Russia‘s exclusive
zone of influence and he did not consider the Eastern Question to be the personal affair of
one Great Power only. Finally, above all, his Austria was not passive in the Eastern Question
but rather its actions were simply different from those of the other Great Powers directly
involved in it: France, Russia, and Great Britain. Austria‘s approach towards the Ottoman
Empire during Vormarz was directed not only by the firm conviction of Francis I and
Metternich of the crucial necessity to preserve its existence and without any territorial claims
on their part, but also by the characters of these two men who were not inclined to pursue an
ambitious and pompous foreign policy. Consequently, their attitudes towards the Ottoman
Empire were always friendly and they never threatened it with war even if they had the right
to do so due to the harassment of Austria‘s merchant navy owing to piracy from the Ottoman
North African domains or of Austrian citizens tormented by frequent cross-border incursions

16
Albrecht-Carri´e, p. 48.

P a g e | 25
of bandits from the Ottoman Balkan territories. Francis I and Metternich also never
undertook any measure seriously violating the standards of the public law of Europe or at the
expense of the sultan even though at least the seizure of Klek and Sutorina would have been
advantageous for the Austrian Empire and easily feasible during the studied period when the
Porte faced dangerous crises making any seriously hostile reaction from its part had Austria
indeed occupied these two small strips of land highly unlikely. The observance of law was
also typical for Metternich‘s approach in economic affairs; he defended Austria‘s economic
privileges whenever he found it necessary to do so – even though he well knew that
sometimes they were burdensome for the Porte – but he did not agree with any abuse ofthese
privileges by the Austrians. He always wanted to solve existingproblems and not pointlessly
cause new ones, which is also evident in his religious policy in the Near East through which
he wanted to prevent the European Powers from misusing the religious problems of the
Ottoman Empire for their own egoistic interests; his approach to the religious affairs of the
East clearly differed from the more imperialistic aims of France and Russia. In brief,
Metternich‘s Near Eastern policy was based upon his respect for the existing international
law, the sovereignty of the state and its independence, that is to say upon the desire to
maintain order as created at the Congress of Vienna. All of this characterised his approach
in Near Eastern affairs, an approach that was in no way passive but was definitely less
aggressive, menacing, egoistic and acquisitive, in other words less destabilising for the
crumbling structure of the sultan‘s state as well as for the European state system than the
policies of France, Russia and Great Britain. More or less obvious imperialistic aims are
particularly evidentin the case of the former two, France and Russia. The French
governments during the Restoration as well as the July Monarchy desired to improve
France‘s position in European politics as well as the government‘s position within the
country. Consequently, they often pursued a vainglorious policy that was also clearly
aggressive. In the 1820s, various projects of conquest at the expense of the Ottoman Empire
were contemplated in French society including governmental circles, of which the famous
Polignac Plan is the most striking example but not the only one. France took part in the
trilateral alliance not only in an effort to control its allies but also to win the popularity of
the French public, and for the latter reason it also sent its armies to the Peloponnese in 1828
and Algeria two years later. After the July Revolution in the 1830s, French governments
spread proclamations about friendship towards the Ottoman Empire but simultaneously
worked against its interests when, motivated by jealousy, they attempted to forestall Russia‘s
aid offered to the sultan in 1833, courted Mohammed Ali and tried to take advantage of the
P a g e | 26
religious affairs of the Ottoman Empire to increase French influence over the Levant. The
Rhine Crisis was a logical consequence of this ambitious policy and desire of the French
cabinets to win domestic popularity. Unsurprisingly, it was France that Metternich
significantly distrusted for most of the 1820s and whose actions he disagreed with in the
Greek Question. In the 1830s, he even regarded France as his principal opponent in the Near
East and he disliked or even opposed its activities in most of the relevant affairs of this
period: the Algerian Affair, the Constantinople Armenian Catholic Affair, the Damascus
Affair, the Syrian Question, the two Mohammed Ali Crises, the Rhine Crisis and the issue of
Ottoman reforms. Consequently, Paul W. Schroeder‘s claim that after 1815 ―France and
Austria usually cooperated in the Near East‘17 is entirely mistaken Russia under both tsars,
Alexander I and Nicholas I, did not desire the destruction of the Ottoman Empire but wanted
to keep it weak and under their indirect control, and their steps were directed towards this
aim and met with success when the Porte was burdened with high indemnities after the lost
war with Russia and deprived of both its formal control of Greece and factual control of the
Daubing Principalities and Serbia. As shown in the book, justice was in no way always on
Russia‘s side but then legality was also not the leitmotiv of its Near Eastern policy. It was a
simple power struggle and neither laws nor alleged regard for the European concert were
important factors which would have restrained Russia; what the two tsars regarded to a
certain extent was the danger of revolution and above all their fear of the creation of a
powerful alliance of other Great Powers if Russia overstepped the limits of greed tolerable
for other members of the concert. Due to its financial weakness, in particular in the 1830s,
Russia was completely unable to successfully confront such a coalition. It was not as strong
as some contemporaries presumed and it was far from being capable of acting independently
because to do so would have meant being able to act against the will of the other four
Powers, which Russia definitely was not. When it celebrated military or diplomatic victories
in the Near East, it was not because of its invincible strength but because of the ineptness of
its opponents. The fact that Russia could fight out a victorious war with the Ottoman Empire
in the late 1820s was not a result, as Paul W. Schroeder claims, of the fact that ―when Russia
took the lead resolutely in the Near East, Europe could not unite to stop it,‘18 but because the
other Powers quite simply did not unite. Russia entered the war only when Nicholas I
neutralised his possible opponents either by binding them with the Treaty of London, as with
France and Great Britain, or by depriving them of any possible allies, as was the case of

17
P. W. Schroeder, ―The Transformation of European Politics: Some Reflections,‖
18
Schroeder, Transformation, p. 660.

P a g e | 27
Austria, which would have been isolated if it had decided to wage war against Russia in the
late 1820s. In the 1830s, despite the fact that Nicholas I claimed that the Eastern Question
was his own private affair, he had to take into consideration the attitudes of the other Powers
and secure an ally. In brief, it is difficult to find in him or Alexander I much sense of a
common European identity. Great Britain was much more interested in the preservation of
the Ottoman Empire than were France and Russia, but its conduct in the Eastern Question
also did not entirely reflect such a desire. Ithe 1820s Canning‘s policy weakened the Ottoman
Empire by supporting Greek political emancipation and was motivated by a variety of
reasons but definitely not by any for the benefit of Europe or in the interests of the Alliance
that he disliked; Palmerstone in his Near Eastern policy was particularly motivated by his
desire to promote British interests and extreme Russophobe resulting from his jealousy and
incorrect judgement of Russia‘s real intentions in the Near East; his pointlessly hostile anti-
Russian policy did not contribute to the peace and stability of the Levant but unsettled the
Porte and destabilised the functioning of the concert. The fact that Great Britain did not
wage war against Russia after 1833 was caused by Palmerston‘s sincere desire to avoid one,
but it must be also emphasised that Great Britain could not effectively wage a war without
allies in the Continent because it lacked the land forces necessary for a decisive victory over
Russia. This proves that Great Britain also could not act independently because it did not
have the force to do so.19 On closer investigation of the conduct of France, Russia and Great
Britain in the Eastern Question during the studied period, it is difficult to see their policies
being motivated by anything other than selfish ambitions, unilateral goals, national interests,
jealousy and mutual distrust and restrained more by the limits of their power than by much
respect for the public law of Europe, respect that was allegedly, according to Richard B.
Elrod, characteristic of European politics during the era of concert diplomacy.20 Although
the Ottoman Empire was not regarded as a member of the European state system protected
by the Viennese settlement, there was no reason why the European countries could not apply
the same legal rules towards it as generally accepted among themselves, for example, respect
for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The motivation for such conduct would be logical
if they wanted to maintain the stability of the Europeanstate system that could be harmed by

19
Even Prussia, generally uninterested in the affairs of the East, attempted to take advantage of
the situation whenever it found it possible to do so, as happened during the Rhine Crisis when
Frederick William IV tried to change the balance of power in the German Confederation in his
favour. As explained in Chapter 26, this manoeuvre motivated by personal ambition did not meet
with its members‘ approval and was finally forestalled by Metternich defending the interests of
Austria as well as those of other German princes.
20
Elrod, p. 170.

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their competition in the Levant. However, they applied a different set of self-serving rules and
sometimes took advantage of the fact that the Ottoman Empire remained beyond the
boundaries of Europe, in particular when France took possession of Algeria or when the
trilateral alliance intervened in the Greek affairs. Matthias Schulz regarded the latter as an
―arbitrational interference‘21of the concert that assumed the right to force the quarrelling
parties into a compromise settlement even by coercive means, and he saw in this evidence of
―a certain arbitrational power and peacekeeping power of the Concert.‘22 It is, however,
difficult to see in this intervention motivated by self-interest and scarcely any humanitarian
sentiment and not leading to any compromise settlement but rather a one-sided verdict on
behalf of the Greeks anything other than a unilateral dictation of force because the three
European Powers involved proceeded beyond any legal limits generally recognised by
themselves when they infringed the sovereignty of another country in a manner that they
would never have allowed to be used against themselves in a similar case. The fact that the
Ottoman Empire remained unprotected by the public law of Europe while at the same time its
vast territories of high economic and geopolitical importance were often situated in Europe‘s
backyard made it a perfect playground for the ambitious games of Great Powers. This w as a
dangerous situation when their competition for power in the Near East could have
considerably negative consequences on the Continent itself, in other words it could destroy
the peace restored in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Metternich was well aware of this
danger and he attempted to remove or at least reduce it by, first, introducing the Ottoman
Empire into the family of European countries with rights identical to its members, an idea he
advocated in 1814–1815 and most probably also in 1840 because there is no reason to doubt
that Metternich also wanted to include the Ottoman Empire in his project for the league to
preserve peace in Europe and, second, by strengthening its security with the Great Powers‘
formal pledge not to compete for Ottoman regions, proposed in 1841. Neither of these ideas
materialised because of the unwillingness of France, Great Britain and Russia to limit their
hunger for political predominance over the Levant and subordinate their self-interest to any
self-restricting legal regulations. Metternich was often scorned for his insistence on his
conservative principles and his allegedly anachronistic approach to international relations
and the problems of the period when, for example, opposing the political emancipation of
nations. However, in this respect his Austria did not differ from the other Great Powers
actually not pursuing any modern pro-nationalist policies but simply using double standards

21
Schulz, Normen und Praxis, p. 572.
22
Ibid.

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in domestic and foreign affairs when it suited their own interests to do so, Russia being the
most striking example with its support of the Greeks and suppression of the Poles. The
difference could be found in the fact that Metternich was not hypocritical in this respect and
was extremely consistent in his principles, which can be viewed as legal guidelines for
regulating international relations, and he actually behaved in compliance with them at least
within the Eastern Question. He was convinced that if the principles of public law were not
obeyed, the result would be the destabilisation of the whole structure of European politics.
This attitude could be labelled by some as wrong and old-fashioned but its sincerity can
hardly be denied. Consequently, if the preservation of peace was in Europe‘s interests, then
Metternich manifested a considerably European outlook in a generally egoistic world, and he
did so not only because the interests of Europe in this respect coincided with those of the
Austrian Empire but also because such an outlook was deep-rooted in Metternich‘s
Weltanschauung. Metternich also served the general peace with his peace management when
first, he insisted on the preservation of its legal framework, the limits of which the Great
Powers were not to exceed and second, when he attempted to blunt the edges of the ambitious
policies of the other Powers. It is not illogical that his peace management often clashed with
their unilateral interests and his views were often unacceptable to or misunderstood by men
like Canning, Palmerston, Polignac, Charles X, Thiers, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Pozzo di
Borgo, and even Nesselrode, all of whom showed little sense of a common Europeanidentity.
Metternich was sometimes criticised by some of these men for not supporting their interests
or even for deceiving them. The ingrained negative image of the Austrian chancellor as a
generally dishonest man hiding his real thoughts even from his colleagues and deceiving his
enemies as well as his allies has been often accepted by historians and is firmly rooted in
European collective memory.23 Some of this criticism was well founded, and Metternich of
course was not a saint: he often used very diplomatic, that is to say ambiguous language, he
tried to employ one state against another and he used other ―diplomatic‖ weapons at his
disposal to attain the desired goal. Nevertheless, the studied documents offer clear evidence
that much of the criticism raised against him is baseless or at least exaggerated. The fact that
must be emphasised is that despite his often sophisticated and subtle diplomatic manoeuvres
his foreign policy as a whole was broad and consistent; he generally expressed his views to
anybody who wanted to listen and his opinions were definitely much more frank than has
generally been supposed. Consequently, his contemporaries often unreasonably distrusted

23
For all these negative opinions see Schroeder, Transformation, p. 460; Webster, The European
System, p. 36.

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him or saw deception behind his attitudes simply because they did not correspond withtheir
own ambitious plans. The history of the Eastern Question offers a considerable number of
examples. For instance, when Alexander I changed his originally hostile attitude towards the
Greek insurgents and expected the same from Austria, which did not comply with this
expectation, he complained that Metternich had deceived him despite the fact that the
chancellor had never concealed that he would not agree with any settlement exceeding the
limits of international law respecting the sultan‘s sovereignty; or when the same tsar at the
end of his life was also displeased with the level of Austria‘s support in the Russo-Ottoman
disputes despite the fact that Metternich usually exerted great pains to move the Ottomans to
yield, sometimes even in cases when the Russians‘ requests exceeded the limits of legal
validity; Nicholas I was sometimes dissatisfied with Metternich‘s support in his disputes with
France and Great Britain when confronting their Russo phobia although in fact this support
was quite considerable, but simultaneously he entirely misunderstood the fact that his own
actions were often egoistic and that his demand for the recognition of the Near Eastern area
as exclusively Russia‘s affair was not acceptable for the other Powers; Palmerstone regarded
Metternich as an accomplice of Russia‘s alleged hostile designs against the Ottoman Empire
and accused him of deceiving the British cabinet when defending Russia‘s policy towards the
Ottoman Empire and of doing little to defend the Ottoman Empire against Russia‘s influence,
yet Metternich was entirely sincere and correct in his defence of Russia‘s peaceful policy in
the Near East, and when the prince did not want to clash with Russia, it was not due to his
alleged timidity but to the fact that he saw no reason to do so because he did not want to
create new conflicts and because he was also able to obtain concessions from the tsar by
amicable means in the same way as he had managed to do so in the Danubian Principalities.
Regarding Metternich‘s personality, his opinions and steps relating to the Eastern Question
reveal that he was a conservative statesman whose policy was based upon rational and
generally remarkably correct analyses often leading to unbelievably accurate prognoses. The
last resulted not only from his extraordinary analytical skills but also from his profound
knowledge of facts resulting from his intensive study of the state of affairs in the Ottoman
Empire. Consequently, although he pursued his Near Eastern policy according to his
conservative principles, in other words in conformity with his broad politico-legal strategy,
his policy can in no way be labelled as purely dogmatic. He very often showed remarkable
realism, pragmatism and toleration towards different religions and cultures even though he
had no personal attachment to them. What, above all, the studied documents disclose is the
fact that Metternich‘s character and deeds need further in-depth and impartial research
P a g e | 31
before any tenable far-reaching evaluation not only of this man and his activities but also of
his period can be made.

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Bibliography
BOOKS:
1. THE EASTERN QUESTION AN HISTORICAL STUDY IN EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY
BY J. A. R. MARRIOTT.
2. Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question By Miroslav ˇSediv´y
3. THE EASTERN QUESTION. BY THE LATE VISCOUNT STRATFOED DE REDCLIFFE
K.G., G.C.B.
4. The EASTERN QUESTION BY Rev. W. H. JERVIS. Woodcuts.
5. The Eastern Question Revisited: Case Studies in Ottoman Balance of Power BY Helsinki

INTERNET:
1. www.google.com
2. www.mordernhistory/newyork.com
3. www.legalhistory/eastern/question.com
4. http.www.worldhistory.com

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